


Menace

by Stina0098



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bodyguard, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blow Jobs, Bodyguard, Donghyuck is rich and in need of protection, Grim Reaper Mark Lee, Grim Reapers, M/M, Switching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:00:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27026239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stina0098/pseuds/Stina0098
Summary: “It won’t work,” the grim reaper responds, his lips pressed together. “I’ve been offered everything from firstborns to eternal devotion. It’ll be easier if you just accept that death is a part of life. That it’s something inevitable.”Donghyuck tries to keep the scowl off his face.“I bet none of them have ever offered you what you want the most in this world,” he says.The reaper narrows his eyes.“And what’s that?” he asks.Donghyuck licks the blood off of his lips.“Death.”(Or: In order to evade death Donghyuck hires him as his bodyguard.)
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee
Comments: 94
Kudos: 655





	Menace

**Author's Note:**

> this is very unlike anything I've ever written before, but I had a lot of fun writing this story so hopefully it carries across! c:
> 
> small word of warning though! this is tagged as an "author chose not to use warnings" work. it also goes without saying that this is /fiction/. but still like always, read with caution! there are a few iffy characters.
> 
> hope you enjoy!

Death comes for Donghyuck on a Thursday night.

He comes in darkness, with a chill that creeps through the furniture and leeches warmth from the humid air around him, turning the windows wet with condensation. It makes the sweat beading on Donghyuck’s forehead feel like a layer of ice on his skin as he takes a shaky breath, uses the last of his dwindling strength to prop himself up against the bullet-riddled couch.

There’s the taste of iron in his mouth and he’s dizzy from blood loss, but the anticipation bubbling underneath his skin has him wide awake.

“I was wondering when you’d show up,” Donghyuck says, making an attempt at clearing his throat that ends in him coughing, in his mouth suddenly filling with liquid.

Death looks up, his dark hood falling back against his nape, and Donghyuck feels any additional words die on the tip of his tongue.

It makes sense that death is strikingly beautiful, he thinks, being the last face you see before leaving this earth. Ink-black hair falls over his forehead, contrasting the pallor of his skin, but what really draws Donghyuck in his eyes. They're round and clear, almost luminous in the dark, the only thing that even hints at a previous humanity, a softness.

More surprising is that his own personal grim reaper is young.

He doesn’t look to be much older than Donghyuck, like he could have just as easily been one of the university students Donghyuck occasionally passes on the streets, clutching coffees in their hands, their smiles relaxed. But where the students are full of life, of roaring blood flowing through their veins, death is drained of color.

His eyes, while large and dark, are cold.

Death doesn’t acknowledge his statement, simply gazes at him, not even stopping to take in his surroundings and observe the other dead bodies littering the floor. One of his pale hands wraps around the base of his scythe, the silver of the blade catching the sparse light of the room, and Donghyuck curls his fingers around the glass he is holding, the taste of blood growing in his mouth.

The oriental rug he is lying on stains a deep red.

“I want to make a deal,” Donghyuck says.

For the first time something close to an emotion crosses Death’s face, but it’s gone too soon for Donghyuck to analyze it.

“I don’t make deals,” he responds, his voice clear as he takes a step closer and raises the massive scythe over his head in one smooth motion.

Donghyuck’s heart gives one final panicked thud, and Donghyuck just barely manages to use the remaining strength left in his body to smash the glass against the floor, the sound of the shattering glass echoing throughout the room, his skin cutting open on the sharp shards.

The grim reaper freezes, his scythe suspended in the middle of the air, and Donghyuck takes great care to keep the set of his shoulders from relaxing, his hands from trembling.

The man he had bought the glass from had sold a lot of items in his small, smoke-filled shop, most of which were useless. It had been a gamble to rely on something he had collected even after Donghyuck had made it perfectly clear that it was in his best interest to sell him something that would work, that it would come back to bite him harder than he ever wanted to if he didn’t.

“It’s a whisper glass,” Donghyuck explains. “You won’t be able to move or kill me for a few minutes. It’ll give me enough time to convince you to let me live.”

“It won’t work,” his grim reaper responds, pressing his lips together. “I’ve been offered everything from firstborns to eternal devotion. It’ll be easier for you if you just accept that death is a part of life. That it’s something inevitable.”

Donghyuck tries to keep the scowl off of his face.

He’d spent years trying to find a way to escape Death’s looming shadow. He had too much left to live for, too much left to accomplish to ever think about willingly taking the grim reaper’s hand.

“I bet none of them have ever offered you what you want the most in this world,” he says.

“And what’s that?” he asks.

Donghyuck licks the blood off of his lips.

“Death.”

* * *

Donghyuck is eight when his grandmother takes him to a shaman.

It’s the most vibrant memory he has, and one of the last memories he has of his grandmother before he runs away. He remembers the strong scent of incense tickling his nose, the vibrant shades of purple decorating the walls, the feeling of the floor beneath his feet while his grandmother clutches her protective amulet to her chest and pushes him inside the room. She had wanted to sit in on the session, but the man in the entrance had refused, and there is a warning in her eyes, a threat of what is to come if he doesn’t behave.

Donghyuck goes to sit on the hard floor like he’s told, but it’s not before he walks around the room, coming to a stop by a large crystal in the middle of the table. It rests on a golden stand, and Donghyuck tilts his head, in the middle of stretching his arm out to check if the gold is real when a shrill voice calls out from behind him.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Donghyuck yanks his hand back.

The voice belongs to an old lady with blood-red paint covering her hands and face, but it’s not until she stretches her own arm out towards him that he realizes that she’s blind, that her eyes are as white as her hair.

Donghyuck swallows, his entire body stiff, but gets up and offers her his arm when she makes an impatient noise in the back of her throat. She latches onto it with a firm grip, and Donghyuck has to make an effort not to bolt, sure that he would end up bruising if she tightened her grip only faintly.

He leads her to sit down on a large silken pillow on the other side of the table, and although he knows that she can’t see, Donghyuck feels her gaze on him as firmly as her touch when he makes it back to sit on the floor, goosebumps covering both of his arms.

She is quiet for a long moment before she speaks.

“Your grandmother sent me to see if you are a bearer of bad luck. If you were cursed in the womb, your soul condemned.”

The shaman tilts her head, and every motion she makes is elegant, calculated.

“But that is not what the spirits want me to examine,” she says. “They want me to read your fortune.”

One of her paint-colored hands comes to rest on the crystal, and while she doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even move her hands, the curtains hanging over the windows begin to flap softly from one second to the next. Donghyuck glances at them, expecting to see the windows cracked open, a breeze blowing through, but they are closed, the room entirely without wind.

It’s then and there, sitting tiny in front of a massive force of nature, that Donghyuck learns that he will live forever if he lives to see twenty-three.

“Then I will live forever,” he says.

The shaman laughs, a short, scratchy sound that makes his blood run cold.

“You will not,” she says, speaking with the same sort of certainty that one would use to say that rain comes after sunshine, that winter comes after fall. “You will not live to see your twenty-third birthday. Not unless you manage to get death on your side.”

She chuckles to herself, seems to find her own joke funny, and when Donghyuck exits the hut minutes later, it’s to the end of a childhood.

Years have passed since then, but Donghyuck can still feel her eerie gaze on his skin if he lets his mind wander, the grasp she’d had on his scrawny arm.

Death does not have such an uncanny stare despite his ability to see, but he fixes his eyes on him with a renewed focus after he is finished speaking, and Donghyuck finds himself unable to look away.

“I can’t die,” Death states, but while his voice is almost chillingly even, Donghyuck has spent his entire lifetime stealing secrets from people and knows when someone isn’t as indifferent as they let on.

“You can,” Donghyuck responds. “I’ve spent my entire life figuring it out, have spent countless resources, countless hours bent over old books. I know how to kill you the same way I know about the existence of the whisper glass, the same way I knew to expect you. That grim reapers weren’t just a myth.”

Death narrows his pretty eyes, and Donghyuck continues, blinking away the black dots swimming in front of his vision. He can see his own breath in the air, the numbness already beginning to creep into his bones, his movements.

“I’ll show you how to die if you let me live until I’m twenty-three,” Donghyuck says. “There’s only three months left until my birthday, you can afford to give it a try. I’m the best shot you have.”

No sooner has he spoken the words than does the magic of the whisper glass fade away, the world around him shifting back into focus, the air no longer tinted with an unfamiliar sheen.

The grim reaper remains motionless for a long moment, simply looking at him, but then he takes a step forward, the glass crackling under his black shoes. He hunches down so that they’re face to face, and Donghyuck stops breathing.

Up close he can see Death’s perfectly arched eyebrows clearer, the gentle slope of his nose. His gaze roams over sharp cheekbones and the mole on the left side of his face before he allows himself to meet Death’s leonine eyes, and if Donghyuck’s heart hadn’t already given up, he is sure that it would have been racing in his chest.

Death leans in, his eyes fixed on his lips, and Donghyuck feels something dark and angry burn in the pit of his stomach as he squeezes his eyes shut and waits for the inevitable kiss of death, the scythe temporarily forgotten in Death’s hands.

It never comes.

“You’ve got yourself a deal,” he says instead, his voice smooth as silk in his ears, making a shiver run down his spine.

Donghyuck feels a pair of lips graze his cheek for the briefest of seconds, cold and delicately soft against his skin, but when Donghyuck opens his eyes, Death is gone.

The only proof that he’d been there at all is Donghyuck’s heart kick-starting in his chest.

* * *

There is little known about grim reapers.

Most believe that they are simply a myth, that they existed in a world before spirits, ancient beings that lost their powers over the ages and were reduced to being illustrations in children’s books. Even for those who still believed in them, the handful of people who’d had personal experiences with one or heard about someone who’d had, not many people have proof that they exist.

It’s not strange, Donghyuck knows, dead men never living to tell tales, but it makes it difficult to flesh out the small piece of knowledge Donghyuck starts off with.

It’s in the cold winter of the Czech Republic, staring up at a church weathered with age, its spiraling tower pointing up towards a gray sky, that Donghyuck gets his first proof that they exist.

He is met by an aging priest when he steps a foot through the door, the priest already knowing of his arrival, and minutes later he is flipping through the old pages of a book that had been saved from a burning monastery, passed down through the ages without a second glance. Its old Latin is difficult to understand and faded, but Donghyuck recognizes the “dis manibus sacrum” on the front, and anything that the text fails to describe is made up by the illustration of a black figure rising out of the ground with a scythe in hand, the sun eclipsed in the back.

It’s only when he comes to one of the last pages that he stops, the ink fresh, the language no longer a curling Latin.

“This is new,” he states.

The priest waves his hand dismissively.

“That was the old priest’s doing,” he says, disapproval dripping from his voice. “He fell down the staircase and started talking about encountering grim reapers.” The priest scrunches his face up. “He was removed as the priest but not before he had managed to do irreversible damage to this book.”

When Donghyuck asks about the staircase in question he is led to a rickety flight of stairs leading up to the bell tower, knowing with certainty that there was no way someone could ever survive a fall from that high.

“Where is the priest now?” Donghyuck asks, his fingers already tightening around the precious book, and while the priest takes a step back, suddenly looking uncomfortable, he stutters out an answer.

Donghyuck books his next ticket straight to Tibet, and while his friends never understand his obsession, Donghyuck knows that all the hours travelling, all the hours spent bent over old scripts, analyzing old Latin, Chinese, Arabic, is all worth it when he slowly gets up, life flowing through every cell in his body.

Donghyuck unbuttons his blood-stained shirt and feels only smooth skin, feels none of the dizziness that he’d felt after falling to the ground, only immensely smug.

He takes a second to observe the dozen dead bodies around him, bending down to see if he recognizes anyone, before he digs his phone out of his pocket and presses the first number he has saved.

Jeno answers his call on the second ring.

“How did it go?” he asks, the soft humming in the background letting Donghyuck know that he is probably at Renjun’s, that he’s interrupting their dinner. “Did you get the information you wanted?”

Donghyuck looks at the blood-stained paper on the floor.

The anonymous person who had arranged the meeting had claimed to have details about his dealings with the Prime Minister, information that would have gotten her kicked out of the National Assembly. Thankfully it had been a lie, nothing on the sheet of paper that could have been traced to either one of them.

“It was a set up,” he says. “Someone sent their whole team to take me out.”

Jeno stills on the other end of the phone, the line deathly quiet for a few long seconds.

“Who?”

“I’m not sure,” Donghyuck responds, nudging one of the dead bodies with his foot, the person falling back onto their back, revealing an unfamiliar face. As far as he had checked, none of the assassins had anything that could be traced back to a person or group at first glance. There were no gang tattoos, no phones that Renjun could hack, no pictures of babies or loved ones.

Donghyuck had expected as much, but it still makes his skin itch, his blood simmer.

“I’ll have to figure it out,” he says.

“Are you hurt?” Jeno asks, the worry plain in his voice.

Donghyuck brushes hair out of his face and decides not to mention his run in with the grim reaper, knowing that that would only make him doubt his mental health.

“No. I’m fine.”

“Good,” Jeno says, letting out a small breath of air, and then clears his throat, business once again. “I’ll send someone over to clean up.”

Donghyuck hums his approval, but despite the smugness lingering in his body, how Death’s pretty face is imprinted in his mind, it’s not even a month later that someone plants explosives in the warehouse he is examining.

He’s in the middle of inspecting the floor when the air explodes with fire, sending Donghyuck flying backwards, his head crashing into the wall. If the injury to his head isn’t enough to kill him, the smoke filling up his lungs while he lays passed out on the floor is.

He wakes up to find that a chill has seeped into his skin, that the ground is covered in white frost, but Donghyuck embraces it, realizes that he prefers an icy cold to a scorching heat.

The room is hazy with blown-up concrete and smoke, and at first he can only make out the silhouette of a black figure slowly approaching through the pale dust. It’s only when the sound of heels clicking against the floor gradually grows in volume, overpowering the ringing in his ears, that he can begin making out Death’s features.

He finally comes to a stop when he is standing only a couple feet away, peering down at him with pitch-black eyes. The orange of the ongoing fire reflects in his shoes, in his black hair, and Donghyuck can’t tear his gaze away, his mouth impossibly dry.

“I brought you back from death less than a month ago,” Death says.

Donghyuck tries for a humorless smile, but it only ends in him wincing, in sparks of pain dancing up the left side of his face.

“Well, unfortunately for me, it seems like someone still wants me dead.”

It grates him just to say it, to know that someone had managed to sneak past his iron defenses not only once but twice, that the culprit was still unknown. His entire team had looked into it, but it wasn’t until Renjun had told him that the few cameras that had been surveilling the area had been tampered with that it had become obvious that whoever was behind the attack was exceptionally skilled in the art of erasing their trace.

It was too early to know if the explosion had anything to do with the shooting, but dying two times in under one month was still two times too much.

Donghyuck struggles to his knees, his hands covered in soot, and shoots Death a look when he doesn’t make a move to approach, to press his lips against his skin.

“Well?” he says, raising an eyebrow. “Aren’t you going to give me a smooch?”

Death’s mouth parts in surprise before he presses his lips together.

“I can’t revive you forever.”

The attempt at humor disappears.

“What are you talking about?” Donghyuck asks. “We had a deal. You keep me alive until I turn twenty-three, I teach you how to die.”

Death doesn’t disagree, but his expression doesn’t ease up either.

“I can keep you from dying,” he begins, “but that doesn’t mean that I can keep you alive. Eventually life will notice.”

“What do you mean?”

“I _mean_ that I can stop your spirit from leaving earth, but not keep life from slowly forgetting about you. You’ll be like a flower, withering one leaf at a time. It’ll start with your sense of smell before it moves on to your sense of touch, your sight, your quick mind, your desire to do anything. You won’t die, but you won’t live, either.”

Donghyuck takes a very, very slow breath and wonders how many times Death had tried to revive people to know with certainty what would happen. For as old as his own personal grim reaper had to be despite his youthful appearance, it made sense that he had been tempted by offerings that humans had made, by people begging him to have mercy, to think of their families, their loved ones.

Donghyuck digs his nails into the concrete.

“How many times can I die before it starts?”

Death doesn’t even blink.

“It usually starts around death three or four, sometimes even sooner.”

Donghyuck’s head whirls with possibilities, with different ways to try to find a solution to the sudden problem. He knows that it probably wouldn’t be detrimental to his life if he lost his sense of smell, maybe even hearing, but if death caused him to lose his ability to form coherent thoughts, then it was a whole other story. It would lead to problems he didn’t even want to think about, problems that wouldn’t only affect him but risk ruining everything he had worked for.

Donghyuck meets Death’s gaze again, his decision made.

“I guess you’ll have to protect me then,” he says.

Death frowns, his arched eyebrows drawing together. It’s a normal response, but Donghyuck finds himself a bit fascinated by it, by how human he seems in the brief moment, almost a little bit awkward.

“What?” he asks. “That wasn’t a part of our agreement.”

“Well, make it part of it then,” Donghyuck says. “If _I_ die, you _won’t_.”

Death glares at him, shifts his weight from one foot to the other, but doesn’t reject his offer instantly. It gives Donghyuck further proof that the story he had read in Brazil about grim reapers being able to walk and blend in with humans wasn’t based on nothing.

“I don’t even know if you’re speaking the truth, if you can actually keep your promise. You could just as easily be stringing me along,” Death says. “The only way I would actually be able to protect you is if I pretended to be human, and I don’t even know how long I can maintain a human form. I won’t do it unless you can give me proof that you’re actually telling the truth.”

Donghyuck grits his teeth and stares up at the ceiling, swearing under his breath.

“Fine,” he says, frustration clawing at his throat.

This was not how he’d imagined his day going.

“There are two things you need to do to die,” he begins. “I’ll teach you the first step if you stay with me until I turn twenty-three and keep me alive. Then, _after_ my twenty-third birthday, I will tell you how to fulfill the second part. That’s not really something I can help you with, either way.”

Death is quiet for a long moment, peering down at Donghyuck like he doesn’t really know what to do with him, like he’s wondering if it would simply be easier to cut his string of life, if living forever would be less of a hassle than dealing with him.

Eventually he presses his lips together and reaches a decision.

“What’s the first thing?” he asks.

Donghyuck sends him a smile that doesn’t quite manage to reach his eyes.

“Only living things can die, little grim reaper. So first you must live.”

* * *

Jeno gazes at them both with narrowed eyes.

“Your bodyguard?” he questions, eyeing the person standing next to him with a blank expression on his face. Jisung seems more curious than he does suspicious, stunned by their sudden appearance, by Donghyuck surviving a massive explosion and then hiring a bodyguard in under a day.

He still looks at Death with interest, though, and while Donghyuck had been worried about what form Death would take and whether or not the chill would linger after he shifted, if the scythe would remain in his grip, they had both disappeared along with the cloak clinging to his body. He still wore an all-black outfit, still looked oddly pale despite the summer heat creeping up on them, but while it appeared odd, it was passable.

“Yes,” Donghyuck says. “I’ve had two attempts on my life in under two months. I figured it was time.”

The grim reaper looks his way, and although his expression gives nothing away, Donghyuck can guess that he’s wondering what sort of relationship Donghyuck has with Jeno, with Jisung, if he had told them about his two deaths.

Jeno slides his eyes over to his new bodyguard.

“What’s your name?”

Donghyuck has no idea how old his grim reaper is, how long he had been forced to sever the connection between the dead and the living, but from what Donghyuck knows about grim reapers, he knows that they don’t have any memories.

“His name is—” begins Donghyuck, about to invent some name off the top of his head, but is interrupted before he is finished speaking.

“Mark.”

Donghyuck snaps his head towards Death, a question on the tip of his tongue, but then realizes that questioning Death’s –Mark’s– name would only make Jeno more suspicious than he already is.

Jeno knows that he rarely trusts people, that it had taken him several months before he had stopped second-guessing his every word, several years before he had let him in on the smallest of secrets. Donghyuck hiring a bodyguard without even knowing his name would alert him that something was wrong, and while he could deal with a suspicious Jeno if he had to, he didn’t want to lose his trust and reveal Mark’s identity if he could avoid it.

He wonders how Mark had chosen his name.

It sounded oddly western.

“Donghyuck, can I talk to you in private?” Jeno asks.

Donghyuck nods and is in the middle of taking a step closer to Jeno when he is stopped by Mark’s arm blocking his way, coming into brief contact with his chest. It makes a shiver run down his spine.

“I can’t protect you if I’m not around,” Mark says quietly, and then winces, clearly not at all happy by his new role.

Donghyuck pats his arm consolingly and feels Mark freeze under his touch, sees him draw in a sharp breath of air, retracting his arm shakily.

Donghyuck pulls his hand back.

“You don’t have to worry about Jeno,” he says. “If he wanted me dead, he would have tried ages ago.”

Mark purses his lips but refrains from saying anything else as they walk away, leaving him standing alone with Jisung.

Jeno only comes to a stop when they’re in front of the large floor to ceiling windows expanding across the walls of his apartment, the city stretching out in front of them.

“I thought you hated bodyguards,” Jeno says, his eyebrows furrowed. “That having someone trailing your every move was bound to make that person know too much.”

“I changed my mind,” Donghyuck responds.

Jeno doesn’t look less worried.

“If it turns out that Mark is a mole and he reveals your plans, it’s only going to up the bounty already on your head. You’ll be dead before sunrise.”

Donghyuck only hums, watches the bustling street below.

“I trust Mark,” he says. “I know that you think that’s strange, but Mark isn’t on anyone’s side but his own. Currently that makes him on mine.”

Jeno tilts his head, the disapproving wrinkle still present between his eyebrows, but knows when he’s flogging a dead horse.

Eventually he just sighs.

“Well, since he doesn’t look like an average bodyguard, you could probably sneak him into the party tomorrow.”

Donghyuck tears his gaze away from the window, a mischievous grin growing on his face as he meets Jeno’s eyes.

“Why do you think I asked you to book an appointment at Kim’s?”

* * *

Kim’s is a tailor shop in the middle of the city, the façade nondescript and without a sign, known purely by word-of-mouth. It’s hidden between a hair salon and a nutritionist, the only thing hinting at the valuable objects inside being the bulletproof glass and the vault door, the expensive cars sometimes parked outside.

Donghyuck is sitting in a brown leather armchair in the middle of the shop, flipping through a magazine when the door to the fitting room opens, Mark stepping out.

Donghyuck looks up and stills.

Mark had looked alluring in his previous clothes, in the cloak falling ominously over his shoulders, but the new pair of black slacks and equally as black shirt empathize his figure in a way that the cloak hadn’t. They make him look refined and sleek, like someone who wouldn’t look out of place at the most important social event of the year, strikingly attractive.

Donghyuck puts the magazine to the side, mouth dry, and approaches silently, only stopping when he’s an arm’s length away from Mark. He takes in the fit of the clothes, his hair, the fine threads making up the suit, and when he raises his hand to feel the fabric, Mark sends him a loaded look.

Unlike the last time, Donghyuck doesn’t pull his hand back. Instead he caresses his arm and the lapels of his suit, the fabric soft under his touch. It accomplishes two things; makes Mark more used to his proximity, which will be necessary if everything is going to run smoothly tomorrow, and also allows him to feel the quality of the shirt.

“Wool and cashmere,” he says. He eyes the pants, ending just above Mark’s ankles. “The lining of the trousers viscose.”

Donghyuck turns his head, addresses the tailor behind him for the first time since they’d entered the shop, a short man with a meticulously trimmed beard who has a habit of licking his lips when he’s nervous.

“Change it to silk.”

“Of course, Mr. Lee. Would you like to try on the other suits as well? Perhaps the one made from a mixture of Royal Quivik and Vanquish Blend?”

Donghyuck glances at Mark, thinks that making him try on any more suits would probably be pushing it. As much as he thinks he could get away with it after some coaxing, he doesn’t want Mark to put up a fight when there are other people watching, to make Mr. Kim curious about the nature of their relationship.

“No,” he responds. “Just send them to my regular address. We’ll keep the one he’s wearing at the moment.”

“Most definitely, sir.”

The tailor disappears into the back room with a deep bow, leaving them to their own devices, the shop quiet around them.

Donghyuck shifts his attention back to Mark who is already looking at him with his round eyes, still stunning in his suit.

“Why do I need to wear this?” Mark asks.

Donghyuck rolls his shoulders and walks back to one of the many armchairs, feeling a need to put some distance between the two of them so that he can breathe a little easier, suppress the strange buzz in his body.

“Because you’re accompanying me to a party,” he answers. “One of the most influential women in the country is hosting her annual cocktail party tomorrow. A lot of very important people will be there. Most likely the person who has tried to kill me twice, too.”

Mark is silent for a long moment.

“What exactly is it that has people wanting to kill you?”

Donghyuck considers his next words carefully.

“I guess you could call me an opportunist,” he says. “People don’t like me because they don’t really know where they have me. That’s the short answer.”

There’s a long one, but Donghyuck doesn’t want to get into it at a tailor’s office, not when they aren’t at home, when it isn’t necessary for Mark to know to keep him alive.

Donghyuck pays for the suits when Mr. Kim reappears minutes later, and then they drive back to his apartment, the lift attendant smiling at them brightly when they get out of the car, clearly thinking that they had been on a date.

Donghyuck presses the button for the 63rd floor and hopes that Jisung had prepared the guest bedroom on the second floor like he’d asked. It had stood empty ever since he moved in, the few people he trusted enough to sleep over always staying in the guest bedroom on the first floor, in the one that wasn’t right next to his, only separated by the smaller out of two living rooms.

Donghyuck isn’t even sure if Mark needs to sleep, if his body needs to recharge, but when he wakes up the day of the cocktail party and finds Mark on the sofa flipping through different news channels, he thinks that he probably doesn’t. It also doesn’t escape Donghyuck’s notice that he’s wearing one of the many shirts they’d gotten from Kim’s, that Donghyuck had forgotten to tell Jisung to get him some casual shirts.

Mark looks up when he senses Donghyuck approaching, eyes widening when he sees Donghyuck dressed in nothing more than an oversized T-shirt and a pair of sleeping shorts, gaze shifting first to his exposed collarbones and then down to his legs, to the shorts ending midway down his tan thighs.

Had it been later than six in the morning, Donghyuck would have probably exposed more of his neck simply to see what sort of reaction it would draw from Mark, to see how attraction looked on Death, but as it is he only raises an eyebrow, tries his best to blink sleep out of his eyes.

“I’m going to make some coffee,” Donghyuck says. “Then we’ll go through the day.”

Mark looks at him out of the corner of his eyes, still not completely comfortable with looking at him when he’s wearing so little, but follows him into the kitchen despite his hesitance, watching as Donghyuck presses one of the buttons on his espresso machine, hot coffee trickling out into two cups. Donghyuck grabs one for himself and then gives the other to Mark, his fingers cool against his when their hands brush.

The feeling lingers on his skin.

“You should get into the habit of eating and drinking,” Donghyuck says, raising the cup to his lips. “I don’t really have much food at home, but I’ll tell Jisung to stock up on some ramen and fruit. You probably need to kickstart your metabolism.”

Mark takes a sip of the coffee, and Donghyuck expects his lips to curl at the taste, but his expression remains unchanged, unbothered by the bitterness of the beverage. Donghyuck hums in surprise but finishes his cup before he speaks again, beginning to explain what they needed to do at the party, how they needed to act.

Like he’d expected, Mark doesn’t like the plan.

“You’ll get kicked out if someone as much as suspects that you could harm others,” Donghyuck says. “That’s the only reason so many powerful people feel comfortable to attend the cocktail party in the first place. For a few hours they don’t have to worry about someone stabbing them in the back.” Then he pauses, bites the inside of his cheek. “Literally, at least.”

If the peace was jeopardized for even as much as a second, Donghyuck would never be invited again, Mark thrown out without a chance to object. And as much as Donghyuck hated the vast majority of the people in the room, not attending the party would mean missing a chance to see which people sneaked glances at each other, attempting but failing at keeping their alliances secret.

It takes some more convincing before Mark finally agrees to his plan, but that still doesn’t mean that he is relaxed when Donghyuck links arms with him seconds before they enter the event, close enough for Donghyuck to smell the scent of clean cashmere coming from his suit.

Donghyuck knows that they make quite the pair, that his own silk shirt, the delicate chain dancing across his neck, comes as a large contrast to Mark’s formal attire.

Donghyuck feels eyes upon them as soon as they walk through the door and are promptly served two glasses of sparkling champagne, Donghyuck making sure to make it look natural, almost sensual as he leans in to whisper in his grim reaper’s ears, his lips almost brushing Mark’s ears.

“Relax,” he mutters, Mark as taut as a bowstring next to him. “You’re radiating tension.”

Mark’s tongue darts out to lick his lips.

“I can’t help it,” he responds. “I’m not used to being this close to someone. This is new to me.”

“Well, get used to it, then,” Donghyuck says, but while he says it like it’s easy, it’s anything but. His brain might know that Mark is off limits, that being drawn to Mark is useless, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of him does. He'd been fascinated by him since the first time they'd met, and being around him the past two days hadn't lessened it, instead it had only grown. His attention was drawn by him without Mark even doing anything.

Donghyuck leans back, pastes a bright smile on his face.

“Let’s get something to eat, darling.”

They end up in front of an entire table filled with nothing but elegant Hors d’Oeuvres –grilled oysters with herbed butter, Russian caviar, crème fraîche and potato blinis, all small pieces of art. Donghyuck grabs a fig tart but doesn’t have a chance to as much as raise it to his lips before a hand comes to rest on his arm, the nails perfectly manicured.

“There was a rumor going around that you had gotten yourself a protégé,” Mrs. Jung says, her lips flawlessly red as they part to reveal her teeth, forming a sharp smile. “I didn’t think it was true.”

The words she means to use is sugar baby, but in circles like hers it had been replaced by the less indecent “protégé”, used to pretend that the young models were simply invited out of the kindness of their hearts, to learn from the rich and successful, not simply because they wanted arm candy and a quick fuck.

“I decided to take after you,” Donghyuck responds, placing the tart on the plate in front of him. “Although I don’t quite like my mentees as young as you do. Difference in taste, I guess.”

Mrs. Jung simply smiles, her emerald dress as smooth as her skin when she turns to Mark, her eyes lighting up in barely concealed interest. She’d always liked cute boys, and while Mark looks mature in his suit, his cheekbones sharp enough to cut, he still has his soft eyes, his arched eyebrows.

Donghyuck tightens his arm around Mark, glares at Mrs. Jung.

“Donghyuck is as sweet as poison,” Mrs. Jung says to him. “It might start with a sugar rush but it always comes back to bite.”

Donghyuck smiles back at her.

“Well, you would know all about poison,” he remarks. “It does look like you inject it into your face frequently enough.”

She sends him a sharp look, quickly losing interest in Mark.

“I hope you enjoy the party,” she says, words dripping in ice, and leaves moments later, a cloud of perfume following her.

Donghyuck takes another sip of his champagne.

“You’re going to have another person sending their assassins after you,” Mark says, a frown on his face.

Donghyuck only shrugs.

“She wants me gone already,” Donghyuck responds, “I have enough dirt on her to last a lifetime. Coincidentally, that’s also the reason she can’t afford to kill me.”

Donghyuck scans the large hall once again, gaze roaming over the elegant people inside, and it doesn’t take long until he finds the person he’d been looking for.

Daehyun is already staring back at him, a pinched expression on his face as he observes the hand on Mark’s arm, and although Donghyuck hadn’t brought Mark to make him jealous, it comes as an unexpected bonus.

Daehyun nods towards the bathrooms, not even waiting for him to respond before he disappears, and Donghyuck sighs, downs the last of his champagne, considers stealing Mark’s as well.

His plan was working the way he wanted it to, but despite Daehyun’s usefulness, he always left a bad aftertaste.

“Get something more to eat,” he tells Mark. “I’ll be right back.”

Mark falters for a second, but then heads in the direction of the carved watermelon, grumbling under his breath.

Donghyuck hasn’t done more than step a foot into the bathroom when Daehyun pushes him flat against the wall, one of his hands next to his head, the other on his waist.

Donghyuck had expected as much, but he still has to stop himself from tensing, to tell himself to relax, to paste a pleased smile on his lips.

“Who’s your plus one?” Daehyun asks, his eyes narrowed, grip on his waist hard enough to bruise.

“Jealous?”

“You were rumored to be dead,” Daehyun says instead of answering. “I wasn’t sure if you’d even show up today.”

Donghyuck searches his eyes but no secrets beside the obvious are hidden in them, and even if Donghyuck wishes to, even he is beyond reading minds.

“I’m hard to kill,” he says, and then he leans in, lets his hand brush over Daehyun’s chest, slowly slipping down to his groin. “I’m even better at showing my gratitude to people who can tell me who was behind it.”

And that’s the real reason he came wearing a silk shirt, made sure to have his collarbones visible, his cheeks dusted with gold.

Daehyun was someone who knew a lot of things about everyone, but unlike Donghyuck, who had started his career stealing secrets from unsuspecting lips, Daehyun had always been easy to manipulate. He had always wanted Donghyuck like a child wanted candy and was terrible at denying himself something dangling right in front of him.

It made him an easy target.

Daehyun tilts his head and smirks back, his smile like honey –sticky and terribly difficult to wash off your body.

“That sounds tempting,” he says, his hands on Donghyuck’s waist leaving his skin itching. He leans down to nose at his neck and uses the opportunity to speak into his ear, hoping to avoid the hidden audio recorders that were most definitely lining the bathroom.

Donghyuck reminds himself to relax.

“A little bird told me that it was a joint effort,” Daehyun begins. “That there have been too many people whose feathers you’ve ruffled. That there is talk of you acquiring a part of the Yeonsan port and that you seem to be on your way of removing all of the politicians known to accept bribes.”

Donghyuck’s pulse jumps, but he goes great lengths to hide how troubled he is by Daehyun’s words, resting his head against the wall.

“A joint effort by who?”

Daehyun withdraws from his neck, his beady eyes fixed on his lips.

“You and I both know that I can’t tell you that, no matter how good your ass looks in those jeans.” He grins. “Now, I’ve been good. I think it’s time for you to be, too.”

The hand on his waist burns.

Donghyuck sees Daehyun lean in, smells the seafood he had eaten from his breath, but then the door opens and Daehyun is the one forced up against the cold ceramic wall, his face smashed against the tiles.

Mark presses his elbow against his neck, the black shirt he is wearing fitted enough for Donghyuck to see the muscles working under the fabric, and despite Mark still being in his human form, the air is suddenly much cooler than it had been a minute ago.

Daehyun squirms when Mark tightens his grip on him, something dark about his entire being, but it’s only Daehyun’s choked gasp that makes Donghyuck snap out of his shock.

“Mark,” he orders. “Stop.”

Mark looks at him, at Daehyun, and then takes a step back, the otherworldly sheen slowly disappearing from his eyes.

Daehyun coughs and nearly collapses against the wall before he turns around to glare at Mark heatedly, a flush high on his cheeks.

“What the _fuck_ ,” he sneers.

Donghyuck licks his dry lips.

“Sorry,” Donghyuck responds, trying to calm his racing heart, and slides his eyes away from Mark. “My date has a tendency of getting possessive.”

Daehyun looks between the two of them, a bomb seconds away from exploding.

His face turns more and more red, and Donghyuck braces himself for the outburst he knows is waiting to happen. His expression shutters, but then there is the muffled sound of voices right outside of the bathroom, and he knows that Daehyun won’t make a scene despite his fury.

He might fuck Donghyuck against the bathroom wall, taking pleasure in knowing that they could get discovered any second, that others would know that he had managed to get the notorious Donghyuck to spread his legs, but he would never get into a brawl.

He wouldn’t do anything that had even the slightest chance of him not walking out with a winning hand, that could end in him losing face.

Daehyun wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, scowls ferociously at them both.

“Next time, then,” he says, looking at Donghyuck angrily. “Without your little boyfriend.”

He shoves past them both, exiting the bathroom, and Donghyuck curls his fingers against one of the sinks, the ceramic cold and grounding under his fingertips.

He takes a deep breath and counts to ten in his head before he meets Mark’s gaze.

“What was that?”

Mark frowns, not understanding his question. A strand of black hair falls over his forehead.

“He had you pressed up against the wall.”

“He was trying to put his cock in my ass, not kill me.”

Mark’s mouth parts in surprise, his face going through more expressions than Donghyuck has ever seen on him before, and Donghyuck knows with certainty that if Mark had blood in his system, his face would have been a bright red. Mark licks his lips, clears his throat, squirms, and although he has seen people at their weakest point in life, Donghyuck thinks there is something unexpectedly innocent, almost awkward about him.

Donghyuck finds himself fascinated by it for a second, before Mark opens his mouth to say “You looked uncomfortable”, and then he only feels cold.

“That’s none of your business.”

Donghyuck takes a step away from the sink and straightens up, adjusts his shirt, not missing the way Mark shifts his gaze away from him once again and swallows.

Donghyuck considers what to do next.

He’d already gotten what he wanted from the cocktail party, and not wanting to spend the rest of the evening ignoring Daehyun’s heavy eyes on him, Donghyuck messages his driver and tells him to come and pick them up. He knows that he should probably stick around to scan the room, to pretend that he has nothing better to do than to drink champagne and eat delicious food, but he has no desire to spend the rest of his evening waddling through sheep pretending to be sharks.

Still, knowing that it is going to seem suspicious if they leave less than an hour after they’d arrived, Donghyuck takes a step towards Mark, unbuttons one of the buttons that he had just closed.

Mark looks at him with wide eyes as Donghyuck lifts his hand and messes up his hair further. It feels soft under his touch, a bit textured from the styling Donghyuck had told him to do.

“What are you doing?” Mark asks quietly when Donghyuck is finally satisfied with the finished look, drawing his hand back, the skin on his palm tingling happily.

“Making it less suspicious that we’re leaving half an hour after we came,” he answers. “You should unbutton a few of your buttons, as well.”

Donghyuck bites his lips hard, and when he stares at himself in the mirror, his lips are rosy, a little bit swollen. Looking like they had just been kissed.

He makes sure to wrap an arm around Mark as they leave, and while Mark tenses once again, he doesn’t push him away as soon as they enter the car and are hidden from view, instead offering his quiet support.

Donghyuck isn’t sure why, but he finds himself reluctantly grateful for it, heart warming in his chest.

He allows himself to slump against Mark for a few brief seconds, his clean scent invading his senses, chasing away the last of the heavy cologne Daehyun had used. Then he pulls himself together, pushes up the partition and scoots away. He ignores the part of himself that wants to remain slumped against Mark.

“I just decided that we have plans for tomorrow,” Donghyuck says. “I figure it’s time that I keep up my end of the bargain.”

Mark tilts his head.

“What are we doing?”

Donghyuck hums.

“You’ll see.”

* * *

Donghyuck has to stop himself from rolling his eyes when Mark crumbles next to him, his grip on the bench tight enough for him to see his knuckles protruding under his skin.

“You know that you can’t die, right?” Donghyuck asks, raising one of his eyebrows. “You have nothing to be scared of.”

Mark glares at him weakly from underneath his bangs but regains his strength for every second that they spend with their feet planted firmly on the ground. The late afternoon sun even manages to make his normally pale skin look unusually vibrant, softer around the edges, and in the middle of the amusement park death feels distant.

“I’m not scared,” he says. “I just don’t really like heights.”

Donghyuck runs a hand through his wind-tousled hair.

“Maybe that’s how you died,” he says.

There is a certain morbid curiosity bubbling underneath his skin as he observes Mark, wondering how much he actually remembered from his previous life. It was always difficult to know what was truth and what was fiction when it came to grim reapers, but most of the scripts he had read seemed to agree that a person only became a grim reaper if they’d committed a grave sin.

He finds himself wondering what Mark’s had been.

“You must have been pretty young,” he continues. “We look like we could be around the same age.”

Mark releases his grip on the wooden bench.

“I guess,” Mark responds. “I don’t really know how old I was when I died.”

Donghyuck sits down next to him.

“Do you remember anything from your life?” he asks.

Mark shakes his head, and Donghyuck notices with some amusement that Mark’s hair is even more of a mess on top of his head than his own is.

“Not really,” he answers.

Donghyuck expects him to look sad, but Mark looks like he could have just as easily been discussing the weather. It perplexes him before he realizes that it would probably be difficult to feel sad about something he didn’t know anything about, to miss something you had no idea that you’d even had in the first place. In some ways it was probably a small blessing for him to forget all about his previous life.

“I have no idea how old I was when I died, even where I died,” Mark says. “The only things I remember are two names, Mark and Minhyung.” He pauses. “I _think_ they’re both mine.”

“Minhyung,” Donghyuck muses. “Korean, then.”

Mark hums his agreement, and they remain sitting on the bench for a while longer before they finally make a move to get up. Since Mark isn’t keen on riding any more roller-coasters despite Donghyuck trying to convince him that being scared was necessary for living things, they end up heading in the direction of the food stands.

Donghyuck scans the stands out of pure habit, checking for any tense postures or fidgeting hands, but when he doesn’t find anything out of the ordinary about the people selling the food, he decides that he might as well order some cotton candy.

He buys a cone for Mark as well, handing it over to Mark who pulls at one of the strands of spun sugar and puts it in his mouth.

Then he stills.

“What flavor is this?” Mark asks, his eyebrows raised.

“Huh?”

“Is this sweet?” At Donghyuck’s confusion, he elaborates. “This is the first time I’ve been able to taste the food that I’m eating. The sign on the stand said that it was sweet.”

Donghyuck stops walking, never having thought that his plan to make Mark more human would work so quickly, that all it would take was a visit to an amusement park.

“It’s sweet,” he confirms, and Mark nods, fixes his round eyes on the pink cotton candy with renewed interest.

They stay at the park until the sun begins to set, and then they leave for the apartment, the sweetness of the cotton candy making Donghyuck crave something salty. The elevator to the 63rd floor opens with a soft sound, the apartment lighting up with a muted glow as they step into the hallway. It’s empty save for the two of them, Jeno spending the evening at Renjun’s place again, Jaemin never working Saturdays, and Donghyuck heads in the direction of the kitchen.

When he exits, carrying a small plate of olives in his hands, Mark is standing in front of the massive windows looking out over the city. The vantage point is much higher than the roller-coasters had been, but Mark doesn’t seem to mind as long as he isn’t surrounded by air, the only thing keeping him from falling being the thin wires around his body.

Donghyuck goes to stand beside him.

“I can’t remember the last time I saw humans actually going about their day,” Mark says, not tearing his gaze away from the bustling streets below, a wistful look on his face. “I spent the entire night looking at them, watching the lights turn on one second, off the next.”

“You don’t sleep, then,” Donghyuck states, suspicions confirmed.

“No,” answers Mark. “I don’t really get tired.”

Donghyuck pops an olive into his mouth, slowly removing the stem, and picks the last one from the plate. Another thing he’d had to tell Jisung to buy.

“But you have a sense of taste now,” he says.

“At least for sweet things.”

Donghyuck licks the salt from his lips and suddenly gets an idea, his pulse spiking.

He takes another step closer to Mark and holds the last olive up against Mark’s lips, Mark gazing at him in confusion, his eyebrows furrowed.

“What—”

“Open up.”

For a second Donghyuck thinks Mark is going to refuse, back away, but then he swallows drily, slowly parts his lips.

Donghyuck plants the last olive on Mark’s tongue and feels Mark’s lips against his thumb and index finger. His lips are soft, and Donghyuck hasn’t been this close to them since Mark had first kissed his cheek to revive him. They feel less cold than they had back then, pinker, and Donghyuck feels his heart skip a beat when Mark’s tongue darts out to taste the olive, accidentally licking his fingers for the briefest of seconds.

Donghyuck pulls his hand away, hyper aware of the small distance between the two of them, of the small wet patch on the tip of his thumb.

He observes the small changes in his facial expression as Mark tastes the olive, the tiny tightening of his jaw, the pursing of his lips.

“It’s salty,” Donghyuck explains, and Mark licks his lips, chases the taste of the drupe with his tongue.

Donghyuck hears his own blood rushing through his ears.

“It’s different from cotton candy,” Mark says.

He feels Mark’s gaze on him again, and while he’s used to people looking at him, all wanting different things from him, to play him different ways, Mark doesn’t look at him like he wants to use him as a means to an end.

Instead he only gazes at him with a budding curiosity.

Donghyuck has never felt more awake in his entire life.

“I’m going to bed,” Donghyuck says, but even when he’s in his room, the blankets drawn around him, he finds himself wondering if Mark is still where he left him, silhouetted against the backdrop of an entire city.

* * *

The next morning Donghyuck wakes to find that Mark isn’t sitting on the couch lazily watching different television series. Instead he is sitting around the big kitchen table with Jeno and Jaemin, a cup of freshly brewed coffee in his hands.

The sight makes Donghyuck pause, know that something is wrong before he even notices the tense set of their shoulders – Jaemin and Jeno never being in his apartment before seven o’clock even on the busiest of days.

It’s only a few minutes later that he understands why, staring down at the pictures on the table in front of him, the last of the morning sleepiness disappearing from his body.

“They could have been discussing something else,” Jaemin says, an attempt at seeing the situation from a bright side that they both know is futile. “It doesn’t have to be about Yeonsan.”

The chair digs into Donghyuck’s back when he leans back, tilts his head up.

“No,” he says. “This is Mr. Kwang investigating why I feel a sudden need to venture into a business I’ve never been interested in before. He must have discovered that I bought acres of land next to the port from Mrs. Jung several years ago and called her to see if she had any idea why.”

It doesn’t come as a full surprise.

Mr. Kwang had always been smarter and warier of him than most of the other people Donghyuck had done business with and he’d known that he was bound to dig his claws into the Yeonsan port sooner or later. Donghyuck had expected it, but he hadn’t imagined that it would happen so soon, that his research would lead him several years back in time, to Mrs. Jung out of all people.

Donghyuck takes another look at the pictures of Mr. Kwang and Mrs. Jung, their heads bent together, and feels his expression hardening.

Had Mr. Kwang been anyone else, Donghyuck knows that he would have never had this problem. Donghyuck would have hidden his land purchase behind an alias or a company, but with Mr. Kwang that had never been an option. He had known that Mr. Kwang was bound to have his personnel investigate every small detail about the alias or company he’d created, and as good as Renjun was at hacking different databases, at making a fake company look like it had existed for years, there was only so much he could do.

It would have been infinitely worse if Mr. Kwang discovered that the company wanting to buy several acres of land in one of the most important ports in the country was a cover-up than it was if Donghyuck let him believe that it was only him attempting to branch out, to try to awkwardly play alongside the grown-ups.

“What do you want to do?” Jaemin asks, more serious than he has seen him for a long time. His pink hair is unstyled, and there are dark circles under both of his eyes. The normally mischievous smile on his face is nowhere to be seen.

Donghyuck scans the pictures one more time and then bites the side of his thumb nail.

“Nothing,” he answers. “I’m going to act as if I have absolutely nothing to hide, that it’s a mere coincidence that I bought acres of land from the both of them, that my plans when it comes to the Yeonsan port ends there.”

Donghyuck turns to Jeno who had been mostly silent during the meeting, letting Jaemin do all the talking.

“Have Renjun check that everything is fool-proof online if they decide to go digging. In the meantime I need to do something that will prove to them that I’m not a threat.”

Jeno nods.

“How are you going to accomplish that?” he asks.

Donghyuck feels his eyes slide over to Mark who is sitting a little bit further away, not close enough to hear their conversation. The distance has more to do with keeping up pretenses than it does with Donghyuck not trusting Mark, because out of all the people that Donghyuck surrounded himself with his secrets would probably be the safest with him.

Donghyuck stops biting his nail, thinks that he might as well kill two birds with one stone.

“It’s been a long time since we visited Yuta, don’t you think?”

* * *

There is already a long, curling line outside of Yu’s when Donghyuck steps out of the Bugatti, the deep bass from the speakers audible even from outside of the building. If it had been any other occasion, they would have entered through the VIP door in the back, where the walls were thicker, where they would have been awarded more privacy, but for the time being he knows that that would have only defeated the purpose of going out in the first place.

The club is just as Donghyuck remembers it, the golden lights running alongside the building bright and massive, and Mark’s mouth parts as soon as he catches sight of them, his eyes widening in surprise. Donghyuck is about to ask Mark what he thinks of the club when Yuta pops out of the entrance, a displeased look on his face. The bouncers pause to let them through seconds later, and while the people in the queue gaze at them with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance, none of their annoyance quite matches Yuta’s.

“You didn’t give me much of a warning,” he complains as he escorts them up the stairs and to their private box, the massive plate of fruit in the middle of the table already waiting for them, bottles of champagne iced and ready. “I had to tell a very prominent guest that drinks were on the house in order to free this table at the last minute, but I’ll be adding them to your tab. Anything else or you’d have me out of business.”

Judging by the diamond embezzled hairpins pinning Yuta’s long, white hair away from his face, Donghyuck very much doubts that’s the case. Yu’s was one of the most exclusive clubs in the country, a table ranging from 20 thousand dollars and up even on a Wednesday, the cost for the weekends much higher. If anyone could afford to give a guest free drinks, it was probably him.

“Although, if you introduce me to your guest, I might just give you a discount.”

Donghyuck follows Yuta’s gaze.

Mark had refused to let Donghyuck pick an outfit for him, instead opting for a checkered overshirt that he’d found in the back of Donghyuck’s closet. It made him look more like a university student than it made him look mysterious, like he was important enough to have a private box, but it suited him in a way that it had never really suited Donghyuck.

It also made him look softer, more like Yuta’s type.

“I don’t need a discount,” says Donghyuck, irritation clawing at his throat. Mark was his bodyguard, not Yuta’s.

Yuta shrugs, smirks, and Donghyuck doesn’t appreciate the almost knowing look on his face as he tears his gaze from Mark. He leaves them alone soon either way, called away to take care of something, and Mark nods towards the crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling, bathing the swarm of dancing bodies below in a golden light.

“Is that real gold?”

“I doubt it,” Donghyuck says. “Yuta’s too cheap for that. It makes for good decoration, though.”

Mark nods but still stares up at the golden chandelier with wide eyes, and Donghyuck is interrupted by his phone buzzing in his pocket. It’s a message from Jeno and Renjun that they’re running a bit late but that they’ll be there within the hour, and Donghyuck refrains from asking any more questions. He’d stopped inquiring into their absences when Jeno had turned a bright red and taken to wearing turtlenecks even when it was sweltering outside.

Donghyuck couldn’t really find it in himself to blame them when he saw how happy they were. He’d known that Jeno had liked Renjun since pretty much the first time they’d met, back when Donghyuck had only trusted Renjun to create fake IDs and webpages, but it was only recently that he’d found out that the feelings were reciprocated.

“We should go dance,” Donghyuck says, turning to Mark. He might have gone through the trouble of getting them a box seat, but it would be no use staying where they still had a semblance of privacy and obscurity.

Donghyuck navigates them through the crowd of people on the first floor until they’re smack in the middle, surrounded by a mass of people on all sides. Donghyuck melts into it, not remembering the last time he was surrounded by people he couldn’t keep an eye on and whose motions he couldn’t track.

On any other day he would dislike it, but Yu’s had stricter security than most, and he was face to face with a grim reaper that could make sure that nothing happened to him.

Donghyuck begins to follow the music, moving his body as well as he can in the cramped crowd, and observes as Mark tries to do the same. He expects him to be stiff and awkward, but while his head is bent at a little bit of an odd angle, he doesn’t stick out. If anything, he has a natural sense of rhythm that makes Donghyuck wonder if he had enjoyed listening to music when he’d still been alive.

Mark had said that he had no idea where he came from or when he’d died, and while Donghyuck knows that it’s unlikely, he thinks that it also isn’t impossible that he might have died a short time ago, that he’d actually gone dancing in clubs before he’d forgotten all about it, his duty as a grim reaper the only duty he had left. In the crowd he doesn’t look anything like an angel of death, the warm glow of the crystal chandelier catching the light of his yellow checkered shirt, making his skin look warm and lips pink, very kissable.

Donghyuck only realizes that he’s staring when someone bumps into them from the side, sending Mark further in the crowd, Donghyuck in the opposite direction.

Donghyuck grabs onto Mark´s arm and pulls him closer before he manages to lose him and notes that Mark doesn’t tense for the first time since they’d met, more used to his touch than he had been in the beginning.

The high paced song that had been playing changes into a mellow, slow tempo remix, and with Tiesto no longer blasting in their ears, close enough that they might as well be pressed up against each other, Mark asks the question that Donghyuck knows that he’s been wondering since Donghyuck had first suggested going out.

“Why are we here?” he asks, voice raised so that Donghyuck can hear him over the music. “I know it’s not only because you think it’s going to help me to live.”

Donghyuck wonders if he should be troubled by how quickly Mark is learning to read him, that he’d sensed Donghyuck’s hidden motives without Donghyuck even telling him. Despite himself, he finds that he isn't.

“It’s damage control,” Donghyuck finally says, leaning closer so that Mark can catch his words without screaming, and sees Mark suppress a shiver when he accidentally exhales against his ears. “Even though you might not notice them, there are definitely a few people sent here tonight to spy on me. On you.”

Mark pulls away a little, his arched eyebrows furrowing.

“Damage control for what?” Mark asks.

Despite the overly zealous crowd and loud music, Donghyuck thinks it would be a bad idea to get into it when there were other people present.

“I’ll tell you later,” he promises.

Mark bites his lower lip, silent for a long moment before he speaks up, reaching some sort of conclusion.

“If there are people spying on us I guess we should still act like we’re in love, then.”

Donghyuck stumbles, finds himself unexpectedly charmed by Mark assuming that they were pretending to be in love when Donghyuck had only said to make it look like they’d had sex.

“Damage control really isn’t the only reason we’re here, though,” he says and is barely finished speaking when someone bumps into him again, but this time it’s Mark grabbing onto his arm to keep them from being separated, tugging him closer so that they’re chest to chest.

Had it been anyone else Donghyuck would have tried to put some distance between them, hot enough on the dancefloor without the skin-on-skin contact, but Mark still didn’t have much of a body heat and all Donghyuck feels is electric.

“I don’t really see how us going to a club is going to help me live.”

With Mark’s hand still on his arm, Donghyuck sways his body in rhythm with Mark’s, turning his head to watch the other people swirling around them, the few couples already kissing.

If it wouldn’t counteract part of the reason they were at Yu’s in the first place, Donghyuck thinks that he could empty everyone out, leave him and Mark alone on the dancefloor, in their own little world.

“It’s the basic humanness of it all,” he says and points a hand towards his flushed cheeks, his rosy neck. “The warmth, the rushing blood. The anticipation of not knowing how the night is going to end, who it is going to end with.”

He lets the hand that had been holding onto Mark’s arm travel down to his wrist, tightening his grip on it until he should be able to feel Mark’s pulse under his skin. He doesn’t find himself surprised when he doesn’t, Mark’s heart still lifeless in his chest.

The idea pops into his head unbidden, and although he knows that he should probably ignore it, that it would be playing with fire, curiosity burns under his skin.

“Can I try something?” he wonders, fixing his attention on Mark’s face, on his clear, obsidian eyes.

Mark looks back at him, a question on his face, but eventually nods.

“Alright?”

Donghyuck licks his lips, feels his heart steadily pick up pace in his chest.

The fingers that are touching Mark’s wrist burn pleasantly.

“Tell me to stop any time you want,” he says slowly, and then leans closer, pressing his lips against Mark’s cheek, the skin underneath his lips cool and impossibly soft. Mark stills at the action and stops swaying to the music, but he doesn’t push him away, doesn’t object.

Instead he swallows, stares at Donghyuck with wide, wide eyes, and Donghyuck’s heart moves to reside in his throat.

The hand that isn’t holding onto Mark’s wrist moves up to land on his shoulder, and when Mark still doesn’t give any sign of reluctance, he presses a small kiss against Mark’s cheek once again, letting his lips slowly trace out a route down to his neck.

Mark inhales sharply, shuddering against him, but is still without a pulse.

Donghyuck changes his tactic.

It also gives him a few seconds to gather himself, to breathe in Mark’s scent, unlike the heavy colognes and perfumes he was so used to. Mark’s scent didn't leave him with a headache, only left him wanting to breathe him in deeper, leaving him nibbling gently at his jaw only because he can, because he wants to know what Mark tastes like.

When he has given himself some space he moves up and kisses the corner of Mark’s lips.

It’s not quite a kiss, but it’s the promise of one, and when he pulls back for the last time, it’s to give Mark one last chance to change his mind, to pull away from the small game Donghyuck had started.

He thinks Mark must know where his next kiss will land, because his eyes are dark, fixed intently on Donghyuck’s lips, the small space between them electric.

Donghyuck takes a shaky breath of air, not quite remembering a time where he wanted to kiss anyone as much as he wanted to kiss Mark, and leans in.

Mark’s pulse jumps.

* * *

Donghyuck still feels the ghost of Mark’s lips against his own when he pulls away, surprise coloring Mark’s entire expression, his eyes wide open, his mouth parted. For a second, Donghyuck is unsure of what to do, wanting nothing more than to lean in once again, to imprint how Mark’s lips truly feel against his own.

Then someone spills their bright green drink out over Mark’s shirt, and the moment breaks.

Mark blinks, stares down at his shirt with his eyebrows furrowed, struggling to make sense of the situation, of the dark stain on the fabric.

“We—I’m—” He clears his throat, looks up at Donghyuck, licks his lips. “I should go clean up.”

Donghyuck tries to read Mark’s expression but finds himself struggling, having no idea if the emotions plainly written on Mark’s face are from his heart beating or their almost-kiss, the stain on his shirt.

“Yeah,” Donghyuck agrees dizzily, a bit gratefully, desperately needing some space to clear his thoughts. “I’ll go get us something to drink.”

Mark nods but stays rooted in the same place for a few more seconds before he turns and leaves, leaving Donghyuck alone with a heart that is beating a mile a minute.

When some time has passed Donghyuck heads in the direction of the bar, and after deciding that it would probably be better if he stayed sober and kept his head clear, he only orders a drink for Mark. Not knowing if Mark has ever tasted lemon, he buys a Gin Sour, watching as the bartender begins to fix the drink when he feels a tap on his shoulders.

“Donghyuck?”

Donghyuck turns around, and for a moment he doesn’t recognize Johnny, the person standing in front of him looking nothing like the tall, scrawny seventeen-year-old he had been. The Johnny in front of him is lean and muscular, has piercings and designer clothes. He clearly isn’t the struggling youth he had been, working odd jobs here and there trying to gather enough money to pay rent.

“I saw you dancing with your boyfriend,” Johnny says, a mischievous smile on his face that softens his sharp features. “I could barely recognize you.”

The word boyfriend rings in Donghyuck’s mind.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, still reeling from the unexpected encounter.

Last he remembers, Johnny had been working as a server at a seedy bistro, sneaking him leftovers whenever he could get away with it. Donghyuck had even stayed in his rundown room for a few weeks after he’d run away from home, just before Donghyuck had begun to tentatively figure out how to survive, how to start earning his own money.

It had been around the same time he’d met Jeno, and then later Jaemin and Jisung.

“I’m the house DJ.”

Donghyuck hasn’t thought of Johnny for years but seeing him well still makes something inside of him relax.

“If you ever need help with anything…,” Donghyuck trails off, hoping that Johnny understands his unspoken words.

From the way Johnny’s smile softens, he thinks he does.

“Same.”

The bartender places the pale cocktail on the counter in front of them and Donghyuck thanks him, curling his hand around the glass and watching the egg foam thicken.

He stills, momentarily forgetting about Johnny as he looks up at the bartender, a man with bleached hair and dark roots.

“Drink this,” he tells him.

The bartender laughs a little.

“Sorry,” he says, an apologetic smile on his face. “I’m not allowed to take drinks from clients, even the terribly cute ones.” He winks, his hands brushing over the different bottles of hard liquor in front of him, faster than they had a moment ago.

Donghyuck thinks about serving the drink to Mark.

Mark, who’d just had his first heartbeat.

“I _said_ ,” says Donghyuck, a deathly chill to his words that carries across despite the loud music. “ _Drink it_.”

The bartender looks his way, paling under the intensity of his glare, and then turns to run, smashing a bottle of liquor on the floor. The people around them let out small shrieks and scatter, and Donghyuck turns to Johnny, his mind on overdrive.

“I need your help right now,” Donghyuck says sharply. “Keep that bartender from leaving.”

Not checking to see if Johnny is following his order, Donghyuck presses the emergency number on his phone, getting up on the tip of his toes to stare out over the thick crowd of people. It’s by pure chance that he sees Mark near the exit, the only one in the club wearing flannel, and lets out a shaky breath. He is already beginning to elbow his way through the confused crowd when Jeno picks up, Donghyuck praying that he and Renjun are already at the club.

“There was an assassination attempt,” he says when Jeno answers, cutting straight to the point. “A male with bleached hair escaped out the back door. Get everyone on it.”

Despite the surprise Donghyuck knows Jeno must feel, Jeno doesn’t falter, doesn’t even stop to ask more questions.

“We’re on it.”

Donghyuck pushes his way past the last person in front of him and grabs onto Mark. He startles when he feels Donghyuck hand on his arm and frowns when he sees the expression on Donghyuck’s face, but for once doesn’t object when Donghyuck drags him out of the club.

It’s only when they’re speeding back to his apartment, Donghyuck unusually thankful that he owned the fastest car in the world, that he pauses to explain what had happened. His words make a chill enter the car, all of the warmth draining from Mark’s skin, Mark looking grimmer than he had since he’d found him and Daehyun in the bathroom. It only fades when Donghyuck pulls into his apartment building, let in by the guard, and has almost entirely disappeared by the time they’re safe in his apartment.

It’s then that Mark turns to him, clearly bothered by something.

“How did you know that he was trying to poison you?” Mark asks, pressing his lips together. “Shouldn’t we go to a doctor if you tried drinking it?”

“I didn’t drink it,” Donghyuck responds, still trying to calm his pulse. It had been racing since the almost-kiss, and the assassination attempt hadn’t helped it. “The protein of the egg was coagulating.”

At Mark’s silence he adds, “Some poisons have the ability to make the blood thicken and make it unable to flow the way it should. It was the bartender’s reaction that really tipped me off.”

“Oh,” says Mark, and the last of the chill finally leaves the room. “That’s kind of cool.”

Donghyuck lets out a surprised laugh, caught off guard by the compliment, but finds that the unexpected comment has his pulse gradually slowing, his mind and body realizing that there is no immediate danger hanging over them.

It makes Donghyuck wonder about Mark’s own pulse.

“Is your heart still beating?”

Mark shakes his head in response.

“Not anymore.”

Donghyuck sticks his hands into his pockets, doesn’t know if he should be relieved or disappointed.

“You know, you said that you’d tell me what it is that you are getting targeted for,” Mark continues, taking a step closer. “Why there was a need for damage control. You said you were an opportunist, but I don’t really think that’s all there is to it.”

Donghyuck looks at Mark for a long moment, at the soft, black hair partially falling over his forehead, at the yellow flannel he somehow manages to pull off.

There were only a few people who truly knew what he was working towards, and even they didn’t know all the details. Jeno knew the most, followed by Renjun and Jaemin, but no one had the whole picture, just different pieces that together made up the entire puzzle. He would be breaking his own rules by telling his plans to Mark, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care.

Mark didn’t have any hidden motives; his only goal was to die. In some ways, he was probably the most pitiful person Donghyuck had met.

“These past few years I’ve been steadily buying up all of the ports in the country,” he says. “That’s my big secret.” Donghyuck wets his lips. “The reason we were at the club was because the person I recently bought a part of one of the largest ports in the country from met up with someone I’d bought land from years ago.”

Mark purses his lips, not understanding why that would be an issue, and Donghyuck doesn’t blame him.

Had it been any other business, Donghyuck wouldn’t even have blinked.

“It might not seem like a big deal,” he continues, “but if they begin to suspect that I’m acquiring different parts of the same port, trying to piece them together, they might begin checking into different ports. And then they will reach a conclusion that something is off very quickly, and that is something that can’t happen.”

Not only would that make every powerful person want him gone, it would also show his hand, make them race to put an end to his purchases, make him unable to finally get the last piece he needed to put together his plan. The Prime Minister would never be able to get away with privatizing the most important port of the country before mid-June if she was under a looking glass, if she was linked to something that could be the end of her career, that could jeopardize the entire economy.

It would risk undermining everything he’d ever worked for, several years of strain all going to waste.

Mark still has a small frown on his face.

“Why are you trying to acquire ports?” he asks. “I didn’t know you had an interest in ships.”

Donghyuck lets his gaze run over his apartment before he answers, trying to find the best way to respond to his question. He takes in the high-rise ceiling, the staircase that leads up to his and Mark’s bedroom, the small kitchen and living room.

His eyes have made it to the grey designer couch in front of them by the time he finally speaks up.

“It’s not the ships,” Donghyuck explains. “Almost everything South Korea imports and exports comes and goes through different ports.” He looks at Mark. “The person who controls them controls the country.”

The confused frown falls off Mark’s face, replaced by something else entirely.

“And what do you want with that control?” he asks. “That power?”

Donghyuck meets Mark’s pretty, pretty eyes; thinks that he could probably lose himself in them if he looked long enough.

“Everything,” he breathes. “I want everything. I want things to change. To not have people being able to get away with murder and abuse and human trafficking simply because they know who to threaten, who to bribe.”

A small exhale makes its way past Mark’s pink lips, and Donghyuck waits for him to respond with a bated breath, his entire body buzzing.

Mark never gets the chance to.

Instead the door to the elevator slides open with a soft sound, Jeno walking through the golden doors with a flush high on his cheeks.

“We managed to find the bartender,” he declares, eyes darting between the two of them before finally settling on Donghyuck. He is alone, meaning that he and Renjun must have split up to deal with different tasks. “He’s contained in the warehouse down south.”

Donghyuck’s attention lingers on Mark for a second before he forces himself to focus on the problem at hand, knowing that he needs to make every second count.

Donghyuck walks over to the coat stand and slips into a leather jacket, throwing a spare coat to Mark even though he doesn’t know if Mark can even feel the cold. He finds that he doesn’t want to risk it either way.

“Alright,” he says to Jeno. “Let’s go down there right away.”

The bartender was the first real lead that they’d had, he doesn’t want to waste time by not interrogating him right away –not when he didn’t know when the next assassination attempt was going to be.

It takes twenty minutes to drive downtown, to park the car next to the building Donghyuck had purchased years ago but very rarely used. He tells Mark to wait outside, to keep watch and keep up pretenses, but knows that it’s useless the second he opens the door and observes the scene in front of him.

The bartender is tied to a chair in the middle of the warehouse, his wrists bound behind his back, but it’s the froth running down his mouth and his bright blue skin that draws Donghyuck’s attention. The bartender’s eyes are blood-shot and glassy, and Donghyuck feels his expression hardening as he turns to Jeno, biting the inside of his cheek until he tastes iron.

Jeno is gaping at the man in the chair, his complexion steadily turning greener for every second that passes.

“He was alive the last time I saw him,” Jeno chokes, looking away from the bartender, sweat already beading on his forehead. “He must have had a hidden pill on him.”

Donghyuck thinks about his reluctance to swallow the poisonous drink, his bound, red wrists tied to the chair.

“Yeah,” he says. “He must have.”

* * *

It’s a few days later that Donghyuck finds himself in yet another discussion with Jeno.

“I don’t need another bodyguard.”

Jeno does not agree, nor does he back down, arms crossed in front of his chest.

“Look, I understand your hesitance,” he begins, “but Mark is even skinnier than I am. What kind of help do you think he would be if a bunch of people tried to gang up on you? He couldn’t even protect you at the club.”

Donghyuck raises an eyebrow, a little bit annoyed by Jeno’s comment.

“What was he supposed to do?” asks Donghyuck, “Elbow drop the cocktail? Plus,” he adds, “I’m alive, aren’t I?”

Jeno huffs, leaning back against the couch.

They’re back in the large living room on the 63rd floor, Mark upstairs with Jisung. Donghyuck had been baffled when Jisung had strutted up to Mark and told him that he wanted to show him something on his phone, to follow him upstairs where they could get more privacy, but now he knew that it had probably only been a decoy so that Jeno could get him alone.

He is also a little bit unsettled by how strange he thinks it is that Mark is not in the same room as him. For all that he’d hated the idea of someone following his every move, he finds that he dislikes it even more when Mark isn't.

“We’re all just worried,” Jeno continues. “Renjun spent the entire night trying to find cameras showing who the bartender had talked to the night before. He even tried hacking into his phone to see who he had been in contact with.”

Donghyuck turns the words over in his head.

“You had a meeting without me?”

“We’re _worried_ ,” Jeno repeats. “Mark could be the best bodyguard in the world, but he’s still only one person. If he is killed, who is going to protect you?”

Donghyuck pulls up short, knowing that he would never be able to calm Jeno’s nerves without telling him that Mark couldn’t die. Even if he did, he knew that Jeno would never believe him.

Donghyuck feels a tightening in the back of his head.

He still knew that hiring a bodyguard would do more damage than it did good, but he also knew that his usual excuses had expired after he’d hired Mark.

“Fine,” he reluctantly agrees. “But I don’t want any more than three, and I don’t want more than one still guarding my apartment at night.”

Jeno nods happily, and by the end of the day two men and one woman exit his elevator wearing bulletproof vests and all-black outfits. They stand out in his apartment like a sore thumb, once again reminding Donghyuck of why he had always been against hiring bodyguards in the first place.

To his immense surprise, his dislike doesn’t even begin to rival Mark’s, who gazes at the bodyguards from a distance with a wrinkled nose before he turns to Donghyuck, obviously unhappy.

“Are they really necessary?” he asks. “You already have me.”

It sounds more like a whine than it does a complaint, and he thinks Mark must realize it because he clears his throat awkwardly and avoids his gaze for a second before he remembers his annoyance.

“I thought you hated being a bodyguard,” Donghyuck remarks, and Mark looks flustered for a few long seconds before he glares at him. Mark might have started off disliking his job, but he apparently hated it even being implied that he wasn’t good at it.

“They won’t be necessary,” he repeats, and then spends the rest of the day scowling whenever someone gets too close to Donghyuck, trying and failing at being inconspicuous.

Donghyuck had told Jeno not tell the other bodyguards that Mark was there for his security as well, knowing that at least one of them was bound to be a spy, and with the way Mark is acting more like a jealous boyfriend than a professional bodyguard, he thinks they probably buy it. It also makes it less suspicious when he orders the male bodyguard still lingering in his apartment downstairs, claiming that he and Mark need some alone time, to not return until the morning.

The bodyguard looks like he is about to object, but when Donghyuck walks over and rests his cheek on Mark’s shoulder, he nods, hurries downstairs without another word.

It’s only then that Donghyuck turns to Mark, suddenly becoming very, very aware that his right hand is right above Mark’s nipple, that Mark is staring at him, all of his previous annoyance gone.

“I’ll go lock the door,” Donghyuck says, withdrawing from the embrace that he had initiated and suddenly finding it much easier to breathe. The distance does nothing to remove the odd buzz returning to his body, but when he spots the wine fridge in the kitchen, he knows exactly what will.

It also reminds him that Mark had never gotten to try drinking alcohol when they were at Yu’s.

There is only one lone wine bottle on the shelves, an expensive red from Italy, but Donghyuck grabs it and pours two glasses, watching as they begin to fill with the crimson liquid. When he is finished he walks over to where Mark is standing in front of the large windows, and takes a small breath.

“This is for you,” he says. “You never got to try drinking alcohol when we were out.”

Mark accepts the glass silently and raises it to his lips, his jaw defined when he takes a sip, nose wrinkling a second later.

“It’s not that good,” he complains, a small grimace on his face that Donghyuck shouldn’t find as endearing as he does.

“You’d probably like it with some pasta.”

Mark shakes his head but continues sipping the wine, the grimace gradually falling off his face the more he tastes the drink, his lips staining a deep red. The sight makes Donghyuck’s mouth go dry, but he doesn’t get a chance to raise his own glass before Mark turns to him, lower lip caught between his teeth.

“How many people do you have working for you?”

“Why are you asking?”

Mark shrugs.

“I’ve met Jeno and Jaemin, but I don’t really know who you trust.”

For a second Donghyuck hesitates, an answer on the tip of his tongue, but then he thinks better of it.

“I have a lot of people working for me,” he answers instead. “Most of whom don’t even know that they’re working for me. But I guess I only have a handful of people that I actually trust.”

“You trust Jeno,” Mark states, but he still has a dark eyebrow raised, prepared to be proven wrong.

“I do,” Donghyuck confirms. “And then Jaemin, Renjun and Jisung, although not with everything.”

He gazes at Mark, fiddles slightly with the stem of his glass.

“I trust you.”

Mark loses his grip on his glass, red wine spilling out over his parchment-white shirt. It turns the shirt translucent, makes it cling to his body like a second skin, smooth skin peeking out under wet fabric.

Donghyuck swallows, wondering what it is with drinks being attracted to Mark’s shirts.

“I’ll get a towel,” he offers, clearing his throat, and tries to stop his hands from trembling.

When he returns, clutching a grey towel in his hand, Mark is unbuttoning the last button on his shirt, the shirt parting to reveal a lean waist and creamy skin. The sight makes Donghyuck pause, and if it hadn’t been for the small flush on Mark’s cheeks, the flustered expression on his face, Donghyuck would have almost wondered if Mark was trying to seduce him.

As it is, he only looks up when he senses Donghyuck, squirms a little.

“Sorry,” Mark says, scratching the back of his neck. “My heart beat for the first time since the club and was a little bit surprised. I didn’t know wine stained that much.”

The teasing words Donghyuck had been about to say about Mark rather spilling the drink on himself than finishing it dies on the tip of his tongue. Instead he walks closer and rubs the wet towel gently over Mark’s stomach, hoping it hides how surprised he is by Mark’s words, by Mark’s heart beating after hearing that Donghyuck trusted him.

Mark bites his lower lip as Donghyuck continues his ministrations, the faint pink of the wine below Mark’s bellybutton disappearing little by little. When he carefully moves the towel up to his chest, right between his nipples, goosebumps follow on Mark’s skin. It makes Donghyuck wonder how Mark would react if he were to lean in, taste the wine off of his skin, if he would shudder, gasp.

“Your heart hasn’t beat since the club?” Donghyuck breathes, trying to remember how to form coherent sentences, how to think.

Mark nods. It makes some of his hair fall gently over his eyes.

He shakes it away.

“I still don’t know what is making it beat in the first place,” he says. “If it’s drinking alcohol, being at a club or just…” he trails off, gazing at Donghyuck, and Donghyuck feels his blood rush through his ears.

The hand on Mark’s stomach stills.

“There is one way to find out, you know.”

Mark swallows, his eyes darting down to his lips for a brief second before they meet his eyes again, and Donghyuck can’t look away. This time there isn’t anyone to stop them, no other people bumping into them, no rushing Jeno.

It’s just them, alone on the floor, behind locked doors. Donghyuck’s hand still on Mark’s naked stomach.

Donghyuck feels like he’s on fire.

“Tell me to stop,” Mark whispers, an echo of Donghyuck’s words at the club, but unlike Donghyuck, he aims straight for his lips.

* * *

Mark ends up against the window, head tilted to allow Donghyuck better access to his mouth, one of his hands is in his hair, the other on his back. Mark’s lips are painfully soft against his, only a little bit cool, but the difference in body temperature offers nothing but relief, Donghyuck’s own blood scorching as it runs throughout his veins.

Donghyuck presses closer, wanting to eliminate the small distance between their chest and legs, and the small gasp Mark releases is muffled against his lips.

Donghyuck nibbles at Mark’s lower lip until Mark’s tongue caresses over his, Mark deepening the kiss hungrily, a quick learner. It sends heat shooting straight to Donghyuck’s core, making him feel like he’s had a whole bottle of wine rather than just a few sips.

The hand that isn’t curled around Mark’s neck is on his chest, and the moment he feels the tentative stuttering of Mark’s heart a dark, heady feeling simmers in the pit of his stomach.

It’s only fitting, he thinks, that Mark’s heart reacts even a little to him when Donghyuck’s own heart is trying to escape his ribcage, the kiss making him lightheaded.

Mark slides his mouth against his, tongue ghosting over the roof of his mouth, and though it leaves Donghyuck moaning, Donghyuck finds himself more interested in Mark’s pleasure than he is in his own.

His blood is screaming at him, the tightness of his trousers bordering on painful, but despite it all, Donghyuck wants nothing more than to coax more gasps out of Mark’s mouth, to see what he looks when he is seconds away from coming, lost in his own pleasure.

The hand that had been on Mark’s chest slides down to rest on the button of his trousers.

“Can I unbutton these?” Donghyuck breathes, detangling from the kiss with a small shudder, getting the chance to really look at Mark for the first time since he had leaned in and pressed their lips together. His lips are redder than they had been in the beginning of the evening, both from the wine and the kisses, and his eyes are dilated, dark and unbelievably beautiful.

“I—yes,” he croaks. “Yes.”

Donghyuck pops open the button to his black pants, the sound of the zipper being pulled down seeming to echo throughout the room, about as loud as Donghyuck feels like his own breath is. Mark’s cock is already straining against his underwear, the small wet patch on his underwear drawing Donghyuck’s attention and making his mouth water. He lets his hand brush over the smooth skin on Mark’s lower stomach, feeling his abdominal muscles contract under his touch, before he slowly, slowly slips his hand underneath the waistband of his underwear.

Mark’s cock twitches against the back of his hand, but the reaction is nothing compared to the noise Mark makes when he wraps his fingers around his length, how he almost collapses against the window, sucks in a sharp breath of air.

Mark’s cock is heavy and smooth in his hand, and Donghyuck barely manages to wrap his fingers around its girth. It makes him wonder how it would feel in his mouth, what reaction Mark would have if he licked the head, sucked the tip into his mouth, if he would go collapsing towards the floor.

Donghyuck swallows thickly, his own cock twitching at the thought.

“I want to suck you off,” he says, voice hoarser than it had been seconds ago. Mark lets out a broken moan in response, his cock fattening up in his hand.

Donghyuck falls onto his knees, the carpet cushioning the fall, and comes eyelevel with Mark’s crotch, the zipper right in front of his nose. When he tilts his head and peers up at Mark, Mark is already looking back at him with blown eyes, his lower lip caught between his teeth. Donghyuck holds his gaze as he tugs Mark’s pants and underwear down in one smooth motion, Mark’s cock springing free.

Donghyuck presses his thighs together to help alleviate the tension between his legs, the way he feels himself hardening only at the sight of Mark’s erection, pretty and pink, only centimeters away from his face.

His mouth waters.

“Wait,” Mark chokes, sounding breathless, like it’s painful for him to even form sentences when Donghyuck is seconds away from putting his mouth on his cock. “Is this—What if people see us?”

For a second Donghyuck struggles to make sense of Mark’s words, but then he remembers that they’re still in front of the large windows, that Donghyuck would be giving Mark a blowjob in front of the entire city. They’re high enough that no one would be able to see them, and even if they did, they would only be small dots, but the thought still makes heat rush through Donghyuck, the pressure coiling tighter in his gut.

“Then let them see,” he says, and then leans in, licking the side of Mark’s cock.

Any words of hesitance die on Mark’s tongue, his hands shaky as they brace themselves against the window, his legs trembling. And despite knowing that there is no way anyone is going to see them, Donghyuck thinks they would be quite the sight to see; Donghyuck fully dressed, Mark’s shirt stained with wine and pants pushed down to his knees, Donghyuck sitting between them, prim and proper.

Donghyuck parts his mouth further, mouthing along the side of Mark’s cock and teasing him gently. He allows Mark some time to collect his breath while he nuzzles his thighs and curls a hand around the base of his length before he slowly begins to part his lips, to take his cock into his mouth. He makes sure to let saliva gather in his mouth and make his lips extra wet, extra hot around Mark’s sensitive cock, and when he hollows his cheeks, the taste of Mark on his tongue sending another spike of pleasure to his groin, Mark shakes.

A broken moan gets caught in his throat, but Donghyuck doesn’t stop until he has all of Mark down his throat, until he is nosing the skin right below his stomach, smelling the warm, intoxicating scent of his skin.

Donghyuck looks up as he pulls back and begins to bob his head slowly, alternating between applying suction to Mark’s cock and swirling his tongue, only to see that Mark has his eyes squeezed shut. His lips are between his teeth like he physically has to force himself to remain immobile, to keep himself standing, to refrain from letting out too many sounds. It makes Donghyuck hum in displeasure, and when that sends vibrations running down Mark’s cock, one of Mark’s hands fly up to his mouth, attempting to stifle the sound threatening to escape his lips.

Donghyuck pulls back with a small pop, Mark’s cock wet with his saliva, glistening pink.

“Look at me,” he pouts. “I want to see you look at me.”

Mark takes a shuddering breath, his eyes blown when he meets Donghyuck’s gaze.

“I’m—how are you so good at this?” Mark squirms, his cheeks flushed.

Donghyuck licks his lips and sees Mark’s eyes darken, dart away from his for a second before they return.

“Practice,” he answers, but doesn’t give Mark a chance to ruminate his words before he leans forward and wraps his lips around Mark’s cock once again, making sure to maintain eye contact with Mark while he envelops him in his wet heat. Mark gasps once more, his thighs quaking, and it really is a wonder that he is still standing.

“I think I’m going crazy,” Mark breathes, and Donghyuck hums happily against his cock, dipping his tongue into the slit, enjoying the taste of precum on his tongue. He wants to see Mark properly debauched, and while he is well on his way, Donghyuck can’t wait to see what he is going to look like when he orgasms, if he will come silently or with a curse.

Donghyuck takes him deeper and has just moved his hand to cup Mark’s balls gently, to caress perineum, when Mark shakes his head, hands trembling as they move to land on Donghyuck’s head.

“Wait,” he chokes. “Stop.”

“You don’t want to come?”

Donghyuck doesn’t feel a need to ask if Mark had disliked anything he’d done. From the state of him, it was obvious that that wasn’t the case.

“ _Yes_ ,” Mark stresses, licking his lips. “I just—I don’t think—I want it to be with you.”

Donghyuck swallows thickly, and once again becomes painfully aware of his own erection straining against his trousers. He doesn’t get the chance to do or say anything else before he is tugged up and into a kiss, Mark not wasting a second to press his lips against his.

Chest to chest he can feel Mark’s heartbeat, the hesitant stuttering of his pulse.

“I didn’t know blow jobs could feel like that,” Mark confesses as he pushes Donghyuck towards the bedroom, grabbing onto the hem of Donghyuck’s shirt and pulling it off of his body. He nips at the exposed skin, kissing down his neck as they hobble towards Donghyuck’s bedroom, and it leaves Donghyuck shivering.

“Then you’ve never had a decent blowjob in your life,” Donghyuck responds, pushing himself as close to Mark as possible, desperately wanting him to continue.

“I wouldn’t know,” Mark says.

They fall onto Donghyuck’s bed, Mark clambering on top of him, moving up to kiss his lips. His hands hover over Donghyuck’s trousers, but when he still seems content just licking into his mouth, Donghyuck huffs, takes matters into his own hands and pushes the rest of his clothes on to the floor. It leaves them both naked, Donghyuck sighing in relief, in desperate need of friction. His cock is aching and hard between their bodies, and when it brushes against Mark’s, still damp from saliva, he is unable to stop himself from groaning, from arching up against Mark.

It makes Mark pull away from the kiss, his cheeks pink, and Donghyuck uses the moment to push Mark to lie down, to grab the lube from his bedside table. It also gives him another chance to look at Mark’s nude body, to see the way arousal has turned his usually pale body flushed, the way precum is already beading at the tip of his cock.

“Fuck, you’re so, so pretty,” he gasps. “You’re so adorable.”

Mark gapes at him for a long moment before he sputters, glares.

“Let’s get under the covers. Quickly.”

His cheeks and ears beetroot red, but Donghyuck doesn’t miss the way his cock twitches at his words. Donghyuck bursts out laughing, and it makes some of the annoyance disappear from Mark’s face, his eyes softening.

“You need to read up on how to talk dirty,” Donghyuck giggles, but then finds himself a bit contemplative, thumb running circles over Mark’s skin, having to make an effort to keep his mind somewhat clear. “Do you even remember how to have sex?”

Mark licks his lips.

“Yes,” Mark says. “I’m pretty sure I’m great at it.”

“I’m sure you are.”

Mark opens his mouth to respond, but then he just grumbles once again and pulls Donghyuck into another kiss, bent on proving himself. His hand wraps around Donghyuck’s cock, and Donghyuck’s laughter is replaced by a whine, by a surprised gasp. The grip on his cock is dry, Donghyuck still not even having opened the bottle of lube, but he rocks into Mark’s hand either way, desperate for any small friction he can get.

It’s only the desire to come from more than just a hand job that has Donghyuck finding the strength to pull away.

“Do you have any preferences?” he gasps, biting his lower lips until it hurts, trying to stop pressure from steadily building up inside of him. He smacks Mark’s hand away.

Mark shakes his head.

“I don’t think so.”

It’s obvious that for all Mark might have been great in bed –is still amazing in bed judging by how Donghyuck is seconds away from coming from a simple hand job—he also doesn’t remember much.

Donghyuck feels his heart beat so loudly that he can hear it in his ears, all of his blood rushing south.

“Good,” he says, managing a cheeky smile. “Because while I love the idea of you being inside me, I kind of really want to be able to say that I’ve fucked death in the ass.”

Before Mark can make another noise of outrage, Donghyuck surges forward and connects their lips, swallowing any complaints he might have. It just turns into a strangled moan when Donghyuck pours lube onto his hand and strokes up and down his cock, sucking hickeys on his neck.

“You’re such a fucking menace,” Mark gasps. “Fuck you.”

“Oh, definitely,” Donghyuck responds happily. “Some other time, though.”

He preps Mark quickly, making sure that the coupling won’t hurt but deciding not to draw out the process longer than it actually needs. Mark already has both of his hands gripping the sheets, his cock heavy and leaking against the bed, and Donghyuck knows that any more foreplay would only feel like torture to him. He begins with one finger, nearly groaning when he feels Mark’s tight heat around his thumb, Mark almost shaking at the stimulation, and then moves on to two, three.

When any lingering tension and discomfort has disappeared from Mark’s face and from the set of his shoulders he leaves short, gentle kisses down his spine, watching the goosebumps that follow and then pulls himself up.

“You ready?” he whispers against his lips.

Mark nods fiercely against the silk of his bedsheets, his hair a mess on top of his head.

“ _Yes_.”

Donghyuck turns him over and lines his cock up with Mark’s rim, pushing in slowly, and despite doing his best to prepare Mark, he is almost impossibly tight around Donghyuck. It makes liquid heat pulse through him, and Donghyuck has to grit his teeth to stop himself from bottoming out, from chasing the scorching bliss already threatening to overwhelm him. It feels like eons before he is finally pressed in as far as he can go, and by then he is panting, his entire body screaming at him to move, intoxicated.

Mark has his eyes closed, a flush high on his cheeks, but when Donghyuck pulls out a little and thrusts his hips forward, the tight heat around his cock leaving it throbbing, his eyes fly open, a startled sound escaping his mouth.

It had been a long time since Donghyuck hadn’t been the one bottoming, and while Donghyuck usually hated the feeling of someone having been inside of him the day after, he finds himself wanting to imprint himself on Mark, for Mark to do the same to him.

It has him setting up a slow pace, still letting Mark get used to the feeling of having him inside of him, but fast enough that Donghyuck doesn’t lose his mind, has all of the blood in his body pooling in his groin. Mark trembles at the action, and for a second Donghyuck worries that he’s hurt him, but his cock is still hard against his belly, betraying very quickly that his face isn’t twisted in pain but rather in pleasure.

Donghyuck swallows, heart pounding against his ribcage, and gradually snaps his hips faster, the squelching of the lube and the sound of skin slapping against skin filtering throughout the room, leaving him dizzy. Donghyuck moans against Mark’s skin, and when that changes the angle of his thrusts and makes him hit Mark’s prostate, Mark goes rigid.

His back arches, his entire body going taut, and Donghyuck is relentless, continuing to fuck him until Mark is sobbing against the pillow, his eyelashes damp, looking like he came straight out of a wet dream.

“Fuck— _Donghyuck_ ,” Mark chokes, and not even a second later he comes with another gasp of his name, shuddering against him, strings of white spilling from his cock.

Donghyuck swears under his breath and speeds up, the image of Mark branded in his mind.

He follows only seconds later, knees buckling as the pressure inside of him explodes, pleasure rushing through his body until he doesn’t even remember how to breathe, where he ends and Mark begins.

* * *

It’s much, much later that Donghyuck feels like his legs are stable enough to manage the short walk to the bathroom, to grab the wet wipes he has stored under his sink.

When he returns, it’s to find that Mark has fallen asleep for the first time since they’d met, and it makes something worryingly warm settle over him. It feels almost terrifyingly domestic, Donghyuck thinks, Mark waiting for him asleep in his bed, his hair sprawled out over his face.

Donghyuck hasn’t ever trusted someone enough to actually fall asleep with them in the same bed –even when he slept with people, he made sure that it was never in his apartment, never in his bed.

It seemed like Mark, like always, was going to be the exception.

Donghyuck crosses the bedroom and comes to stand right in front of Mark, holding his breath as he lets his hand come to rest over his naked chest. It comes as both a relief and a worry that his heart is still beating once a minute, and when he withdraws his hand, Donghyuck makes sure that he’s still asleep before he walks over to the bookshelf lining one of the walls and applies pressure to two books simultaneously.

A second later the door to his secret study opens.

Donghyuck sneaks another glance at Mark before he enters, his gaze instantly drawn to one of the old books placed carefully on the table. He strokes the back of one gently, thumbs the “dis manibus sacrum” on the front, the bloody handprint still staining one of the pages.

He skims the book quickly before he moves on to the rest of the notebooks in the room, the old scriptures he had gathered over the course of several years, and scoops them all up into his arms.

Minutes later he lights them all on fire.

* * *

When Donghyuck wakes the next morning, Mark is the one peering down at him with gentle eyes.

“I fell asleep yesterday,” Mark states, and Donghyuck squeezes his eyes shut, feels a little bit shy. He usually had at least a few minutes to himself before he saw someone else in the morning, to run at least a hand through his hair.

“You don’t say.”

When he opens his eyes again, Mark leans in to kiss him, and Donghyuck’s heart jumps to his throat, caught off guard. The way the night had ended, they hadn’t discussed if it would simply be a one-time thing or something more frequent. With Donghyuck’s past flings it had been an unspoken rule to not kiss the morning after, it never being a morning after.

Mark not being familiar with the world of hook-ups, it wasn’t strange that he didn’t differentiate night and morning.

Donghyuck finds himself reluctantly elated by it, the thought of never kissing Mark again making his chest feel uncomfortably tight.

They lay in bed for a while longer, just exchanging gentle kisses that continue to have Donghyuck’s heart threatening to take flight, before Donghyuck knows that he won’t be able to put off starting the day any longer.

It’s already a small wonder that the new bodyguard hadn’t gone to check up on them already.

They’re halfway through breakfast when he finally shows up, and only minutes later he's followed by Jaemin and Renjun. The rest of the day flies by on routine, with the one change being that Mark’s eyes follow him with a new emotion to them, a new intensity.

When Donghyuck catches him staring he clears his throat and looks away, and while Donghyuck thinks he probably steals just as many glances back, has done so since the moment Mark first became his bodyguard, he’s more proficient in the art of getting away with it than Mark is.

That doesn’t mean that other people don’t notice, though, Renjun turning to him with a raised eyebrow –Donghyuck belatedly coming to the realization that he’d missed the last minute of what he’d said in favor of watching Mark.

Donghyuck clears his throat. The sound is much louder in the spartan warehouse than he had hoped it would be.

“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t sleep well last night. What did you say?”

Renjun levels him with an unimpressed look.

“I _said_ , that whoever wants you dead is meticulous about deleting anything that can be traced back to them,” Renjun turns back to the computer in front of him. “I traced all of the text and calls that the bartender made this past six months but still couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary.” Renjun narrows his eyes. “Do you want me to see if I can hack into Yuta’s cellphone? To see if he could be an accomplice?”

Donghyuck frowns.

He knows that Yuta had walked over more than a few people to get to his position, but he had also always let Donghyuck know if he’d had a problem with him in the past. Trying to kill him without letting Donghyuck know the reason was unlike him.

Then again, Donghyuck couldn’t disregard the fact that the assassination attempt had happened at his club. Yu’s might have been known for their great security, but it was useless if the person bringing poison into the club was the one person the bouncers never checked.

“I’m pretty sure Yuta changes his phone once a month,” he says. “But you could investigate the other bartenders. Maybe the assassin wasn’t the only one who received orders to kill me if they got the chance.”

Renjun nods, and then slides his gaze over to Mark who is still talking to Jeno a distance away, small smiles on both of their faces. Despite Jeno’s initial hesitancy towards him, they had developed something resembling a tentative friendship over the course of the time Mark had been guarding him.

It made Donghyuck equally as happy as it made him want to steal Mark away, to tear the shirt over his head and leave more hickeys on his skin, to pull Mark’s attention back to him.

“Do you want me to check out your bodyguard as well?”

Donghyuck stops himself from glaring just in time.

“No.”

And isn’t that a new sort of thing, Donghyuck thinks, to be one hundred percent sure of someone.

They leave the warehouse soon after, Donghyuck catching sight of some dust on Jeno’s jacket when they’re exiting the building. He goes to brush it off and catches Mark looking at them with a strange expression on his face.

He thinks it’s jealousy until they’re back at his apartment, alone for the first time since breakfast, Donghyuck feeling the same strange buzzing underneath his skin that he had felt the night before, hyper aware of Mark’s every move, how much distance there is in between their bodies. He had thought that it would disappear after having sex with him, he hadn’t thought it would only intensify.

“How come it’s so easy for you to be so touchy?” Mark asks. “You never hesitate to go over and touch people, and you always stay close to me at home, as well.”

Donghyuck finds himself distracted by Mark referencing his apartment as home before he focuses on his question, wondering how to answer it. For a second, he considers being sarcastic, flushing a bit at Mark saying that he tended to follow him around his apartment, but then he decides to answer it truthfully, never having put much thought into his habit.

“I guess I just find it calming,” he admits.

They’re on the couch on the second floor, a drama on the television that neither he nor Mark are really following, and this time it’s the female bodyguard who is downstairs keeping watch.

“I never really got much affection when I was young. I guess I’m making up for it.”

“Oh.”

Donghyuck turns his head to look at Mark, a question on the tip of his tongue only to find Mark looking back at him softly. It has Donghyuck throat tightening, and when he is pulled into a gentle kiss moments later, Donghyuck feels the last of his defenses crumble.

He knows that they’re both playing a dangerous game, that he should put distance between the two of them and keep his head clear if he wants to live to see his twenty-third birthday, but Mark’s makes it impossible.

He isn’t sure how long Mark peppers his lips and cheeks with small kisses before they grow longer and more passionate, Donghyuck ending up sprawled out on the couch with Mark on top of him, but for the coming few days, Mark is more open with his affection even when they aren’t at home. He takes to putting a hand over the small of Donghyuck’s back, to pressing his arm against his when they’re standing next to each other, to caressing the back of his neck absentmindedly. It’s nothing that Donghyuck isn’t used to doing to his friends or something that even hints at the kisses exchanged behind closed doors, but Donghyuck revels in the touches, presses closer to Mark whenever he can, electricity sparking through him.

It’s even to the point that Jeno notices, but Donghyuck doesn’t mind.

He’s never wanted to be anyone’s, never wanted to have anyone, but he feels a sort of strange pleasure in others knowing that Mark isn’t just his bodyguard. He likes the idea of Johnny calling Mark his boyfriend even if he knows that he will never be, that anything between them is destined to end before it even gets a chance to start.

He likes it when they are lying on his bed later that night, listening to Mark’s heart beating slowly. He likes it when he runs his fingers down his bare chest, over his pink nipples, down to his cock, slowly pumping it so that it fills out before he moves to straddle him. He likes the shallow breath Mark takes, the way he can’t take his eyes off Donghyuck when he lowers himself down onto his cock, the way Donghyuck whole body burns with want.

“You’re so beautiful,” Mark rasps, eyes wide in the dark as Donghyuck begins to move slowly, getting used to the feeling of having Mark inside of him.

In between Mark’s legs he’d almost forgotten how good it could feel to be stretched open, how deliciously full it made him feel. Judging from how Mark’s heart goes from beating once a minute to beating twice under his fingertips, how he has his mouth parted, not tearing his eyes away from him, Mark doesn’t seem to dislike the change in positions either.

It’s when they are racing towards the climax that words begin to spill from Mark’s mouth, drunk off the taste of him, of them, of the bottle of wine they had shared.

“Sometimes I think this is a dream,” Mark gasps, and there’s an embarrassed expression on his face like he wishes he could stop his words, but they escape his mouth nonetheless. “That I’ll blink one day and go back to being cold. To nothing else. No one.”

Mark sounds vulnerable, and Donghyuck feels something dark seeping through him at the thought of not feeling Mark’s beating heart again, of never seeing him after he turned twenty-three.

Donghyuck squeezes his eyes shut, hopes it hides the tumult in his eyes, and leans in to kiss Mark once again, trying to empty his mind and focus on the feeling of the pleasure shooting up and down his spine. He speeds up as Mark pulls him closer, rocks his hips faster, and while the feeling of Mark’s beating heart had been comforting a minute ago, Donghyuck finds himself wishing that it would slow down for the first time ever, that he could prolong the borrowed time they lived on a little while longer.

During the next few weeks, he can almost convince himself that he has.

When they go outside there are no snipers hiding on rooftops, no more bombs planted in the buildings he is visiting or attempts to poison the food he consumes. It’s even to the point that Mark turns to him on a Friday morning, still blinking sleep out of his eyes, and asks “Do you think the person behind the attacks gave up?”.

There is a small dollop of cream on his lips, Mark having abandoned his habit of drinking his coffee black after he’d regained his sense of taste, trading it for cream and sugar.

Donghyuck reaches over and brushes it away with the tip of his thumb, eyes lingering on his lips that had been wrapped around his cock the night before.

“I’m not sure.” Donghyuck answers, withdrawing his hand and swallowing drily. “Whoever was behind them put a lot of effort and money into the attacks. Most likely they’re just biding their time and plotting something else.”

The comment makes Mark frown.

“That doesn’t bother you?”

Donghyuck bites the inside of his cheek, shrugs a little.

“Not as long as the assassination attempts don’t resume until I’ve turned twenty-three.”

Mark is silent for a few seconds, and Donghyuck takes the opportunity to take in his relaxed morning glow, the smooth skin that looked less pale now than it did when they’d just met. His hair is a little bit damp from the shower they had taken to wash off the dirt that the wet wipes had missed, and he looks youthful, unmistakably happy.

“How come you only want to survive until you’re twenty-three?” he asks. “Aren’t you afraid of dying after your birthday as well?”

“No,” Donghyuck answers. “A shaman told me I wouldn’t.”

Mark looks at him in surprise.

“I didn’t know you were religious.”

“I’m not,” Donghyuck responds. “But my grandmother was. After my father ran away and my mother died she became sure that I was born evil, a demon sent to torment her and her family. She sent me to a shaman because she wanted to know if she had to kill me.”

Mark puts his beverage down, all lazy morning glow disappearing from his body.

“It sounds to me like it was your grandmother who was evil,” Mark says.

An emotion Donghyuck is terrified of reading swims in his eyes. He recognizes it because he feels it in himself.

Donghyuck looks away.

“I can’t blame her,” Donghyuck mumbles against his cup. “I would have turned crazy if I’d had to raise such a perfect child, too.”

Mark ignores his sarcasm.

“You’ll live to see your twenty-third birthday,” he says. “I promise.”

Donghyuck feels like his chest is splitting, but he still manages a cheeky smile that he hopes doesn’t give his feelings away.

“Well, it would suck to have a whole team of bodyguards and still die.”

And when Mark sticks his tongue out, Donghyuck can almost pretend like nothing is wrong.

* * *

The last few days leading up to his birthday pass by quickly, gone in the blink of an eye, and more than ever, Donghyuck finds himself dreading the approach of his birthday. He’d always wanted to stop constantly looking over his shoulders, to finally put all of his plans into action, but he wants to delay having to tell Mark how to die even more.

He isn’t even sure how he will be able to bring himself to reveal what the last step is once the day comes, and rather than relaxing in the knowledge that he will most likely live to see an old age, Donghyuck finds himself more and more tense for every second that passes. Some of it reflects in Mark, because he turns down Donghyuck’s offer to spend the day before his birthday exploring the city and eating expensive food, instead telling him that he’d rather spend time at home.

And so they spend the day in his apartment, eating brunch in front of the large windows before they end up back in Donghyuck’s bed, Donghyuck stripping Mark off his clothes with a newfound desperation, wanting to imprint the feeling of Mark’s body moving against his, his skin against his skin, his lips ghosting over his neck.

Donghyuck’s own cock is trapped between their bodies, hard and aching, and he nearly collapses against Mark when Mark puts a hand between his legs and wraps his fingers around it, begins to stroke him off just the way Donghyuck likes it.

“Which way do you want it?” Mark asks breathlessly, staring into his eyes, so terribly pretty that it takes Donghyuck’s breath away. His hair is pushed back, bright teeth peeking out from underneath his lips, and Mark might have claimed to dislike the adjective, but it didn’t make it less fitting.

Donghyuck wants to spend the rest of his life just looking at him, mapping his body out and getting to know it just as well as he knows his own.

Donghyuck presses their foreheads together, finds it difficult to form a coherent sentence with Mark’s hands on him.

“I want to be the one on top.”

Mark swallows, and Donghyuck sees the flush that crawls up his chest, his lips swollen.

“Alright.”

This time Donghyuck takes his time preparing Mark, slowly adding one finger at a time, teasing the rim of muscles around his entrance until Mark is breathless from arousal, nibbling at his lips. He only stops once he is three fingers deep inside of him, pulling out and slipping his legs between Mark’s smooth thighs, fingers caressing his waist and hips before he slickens himself up.

The lube is cold against his cock, and the difference in temperature between the cool liquid and Mark’s heat has him inhaling sharply, swallowing hard.

His cock had already felt overly sensitive from Mark’s earlier ministrations, from the perfect view of Mark beneath him, and he uses the few seconds before he begins to truly push himself inside of Mark to collect his breath.

Like always, it’s a tight fit, and Donghyuck pauses once he is fully inside of Mark, Mark feeling like heaven around him.

“You alright?” he murmurs against Mark’s skin, and Mark nods ruggedly, a bit overwhelmed.

“Yes,” Mark breathes, but he still winces a little when Donghyuck pulls out and then sheathes himself in one smooth motion. Fire sizzles through him, and he leaves a wet, dizzy kiss against Mark’s neck, nibbling at his ear lobe until Mark jerks and begins to rock his hips slowly, desperate for any friction that he can get.

Donghyuck sets up an easy rhythm as Mark gradually melts around him, meeting him thrusts for thrust, more used to the dance their bodies create than he had been that night several weeks ago. Donghyuck gasps against his mouth when he digs his nails into his back and rocks his hips faster, harder.

“Mark,” he breathes, the bed groaning under them, and Mark’s face twists in pleasure, arching eyebrows drawing together. Donghyuck switches them up so that Mark comes to sit on his lap, Donghyuck’s legs folded underneath him, and the weight of Mark’s body has him sinking down deeper onto Donghyuck’s cock, taking him better. Tension coils in the pit of Donghyuck’s stomach, and his arms come to wrap around Mark’s waist, hunger and heat burning through him until he is drunk with it.

Mark feels so perfect around him, so perfect with him, no one else even coming close to the way his insides light up when he just as much as catches sight of him. He had never thought that he could feel something more than friendship for someone, but the feelings that Mark inspire in him have been different from the first time they met. They were of a different kind, ran deeper than anything he had ever felt before, down to his core, to the very essence of his being.

They left him lightheaded.

Donghyuck speeds up, and Mark’s head falls back against Donghyuck’s shoulder, a moan escaping his lips as he presses himself closer, the tightening of the muscles around Donghyuck’s cock letting him know that he’s close.

Donghyuck lets one of the hands that had been supporting Mark sneak down between his legs, and his fingers haven’t done more than encircle Mark’s sensitive cock before Mark sobs, shaking around him, and comes.

Donghyuck follows soon after, rhythm faltering as he chases his climax, the pleasure that threatens to swallow him whole. It’s Mark gasping out his name that finally tips him over the edge, the world stuttering on its axis as white-hot bliss pulses through him, leaving him collapsing against Mark, breathless.

The day passes with him and Mark alternating between lazily watching movies and ordering in, kissing and having sex, taking baths, and it’s arguably one of the best days of Donghyuck’s life, but there is still an undercurrent of tension running under his skin, making him unable to relax. It’s the only thing that pulls him from his bed at half past eleven in the evening, half an hour until the break of a new day, and pulling on a pair of fresh underwear, trying to keep Mark from noticing the restless state he is in.

He comes to stand in front of the windows, the night dark outside, and feels his gaze drawn to the lights on the street far below, surprisingly empty for it being a Friday. It was usually filled with white-collar workers getting off late and heading to grab drinks with their co-workers, with people in their twenties getting ready for a night out.

Donghyuck bites the inside of his cheek.

He casts another look at Mark who is humming a song to himself, fingers tapping a rhythm against his chest, and hesitates, wondering if he was overthinking things.

It’s only the years of looking over his own shoulder that has him pulling away from the window, going to the small monitor by his study. He checks the cameras on the first floor and doesn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.

It’s only when he goes to check the underground parking lot and sees the guard stationed outside of his private elevator, the same guard who has always had Fridays off for as long as Donghyuck has lived in the apartment, that he stills.

He turns to Mark, a million different scenes replaying in his mind; the anonymous threat he’d gotten from someone knowing some of the details behind his meeting with the Prime Minister, the time he’d been on the phone with Jeno, the explosion in the warehouse, the bartender who hadn’t wanted to die, the struggles in finding a lead.

There was only one person who could have been behind it all, who had access to his private surveillance cameras.

Donghyuck doesn’t have time to feel anything else other than cold before he turns to Mark, adrenaline rushing through his body.

“Mark,” he says, and hears the odd tilt to his voice. “Get dressed.”

Mark frowns, not understanding, and Donghyuck has just dived for his gun when there is a massive explosion downstairs, the elevator blowing open.

From the emergency exercise Donghyuck had held when he’d just moved in, he knows that it’ll take thirty seconds for the assassins to storm upstairs, to reach Donghyuck’s bedroom. Since they had never been in his apartment before and didn’t know if he was upstairs or hiding downstairs, he knows that the thirty seconds would probably stretch out to become one minute, but that still left him with no time to get out of the building, for backup to arrive.

“Get back,” he tells Mark as he loads his firearm and tosses a smaller gun to him, knowing that he won’t have the time to tell him how to pull the trigger, how to prepare for the recoil.

He isn’t sure how many people are in the apartment, but he pushes the plant on his bedside table to the side and pushes the button hidden inside of the pot, the small bombs hidden in his furniture on the 63rd floor all detonating. The floor shakes a little, the explosion followed by the sound of shouts, and although Donghyuck doubts that he killed all of the assassins in his apartment, he can at least hope that he killed or injured a few.

His only hope is holding out until backup comes, to make sure to stay out of sight.

The only blessing is that he doesn’t have to worry about Mark dying, that the worst-case scenario would still only mean Donghyuck losing one of his senses, as annoying as that would be.

When he turns to him, Mark is paler than he has ever seen him before.

“I can’t shift,” Mark states, taught as a bowstring. “It’s taking longer than it should.”

Where before Mark had made the entire room icy-cold, had caused a chill to run down his spine, there is nothing. There’s not even a degree of a difference, the only thing telling of his past powers being the warm breeze ruffling Donghyuck’s hair.

“I can’t protect you until it works.”

“It’s fine,” Donghyuck lies, heart trying to break out of his ribcage. He tells himself that he had managed to survive years without Mark’s help, that Mark taking longer to shift wouldn’t matter in the end. He still had his gun. “Just stay out of the way.”

In front of him he can see Mark’s imagination running wild, sees him swallow hard, terrified of not being able to keep his promise.

“I need to tell you something.”

And just like that Donghyuck knows exactly what it is he is going to say.

It makes his blood freeze to ice in his veins, never having thought that refusing to tell Mark what the second thing he needed to do in order to live would come back to bite him at a time like this. Out of all the times Mark could have chosen to tell him, now was the worst.

For the first time ever, Donghyuck finds himself more scared of someone else getting hurt than he is of himself, the taste of blood growing in his mouth, hands damp as they grip his gun.

“Donghyuck, I—”

“ _Stop_ —” Desperation seeps into his tone.

“—Love you.”

For a second the words hang in the air between them, suspended, but then the first assassin bursts into the room. He aims his gun at Donghyuck, and Donghyuck, still reeling from Mark’s unexpected confession, doesn’t have time to aim his gun and press the trigger. The world slows down around him, the only thing he can hear being his own bated breath and the immense sound of a gun firing.

He braces himself, expecting pain to explode from somewhere in his body, but feels nothing.

In front of him, having moved to protect him, Mark bleeds red.

* * *

There is a frown on Jeno’s face.

“Are you sure about this?” he asks, looking at him with downturned eyes that Donghyuck pointedly avoids. There is understanding, kindness, even comfort there, but Donghyuck doesn’t want it. “This is everything you’ve worked for. Are you sure you want to throw it all away?”

Donghyuck’s nails dig into the palm of his hand.

He searches for something to say, something that will make Jeno stop looking at him like he’s a fragile glass seconds away from breaking, but for once in his life doesn’t come up with anything. It’s that and nothing else that reminds him that he should probably sleep, that he probably needs to get something in his body other than coffee.

“I don’t really care anymore,” Donghyuck finally responds.

Jeno parts his mouth, prepared to counter his statement, but closes it when Renjun strokes over his back, finger gentle against his shoulders. It makes some of the tension drain from Jeno’s body and Donghyuck feels his stomach sink.

In the end Jeno only says, “I think you’re going to regret selling the ports.”

Donghyuck presses his lips together.

“I won’t.”

Jeno leaves soon after, sent to prepare the invites to the auction, and despite the top percentage of the society being busy individuals, usually needing weeks to clear their schedules, they’re also vultures. Not even a day has passed after Jeno sends out the invitations that they’ve all accepted, clearly happy that Donghyuck is beginning to understand his place in the hierarchy, that he is even sinking so low as to gather them all together in the light of day, obviously way in over his head.

Donghyuck arranges the meeting in a conference hall by the lake, the location big enough to comfortably gather the hundred or so people invited but still far away from the rest of the bustling city, guaranteeing them much needed privacy.

Donghyuck is standing on the roof of a building some distance away from the conference hall the day of the event, gazing out at the white building when Renjun shows up, the rest of his friends in one of his many warehouses miles away.

He approaches with a puckered forehead, a red jacket thrown over his shoulders, and frowns when Donghyuck meets his gaze.

“How are you holding up?” he asks, stopping some distance away from Donghyuck.

Donghyuck shrugs.

“I’m great.”

“That’s not true.”

“Then don’t ask.”

Renjun tries not to frown but fails, and Donghyuck sticks his hands deep in his pockets, feels fabric, the cold touch of steel. Had it been a few days ago the action would have made him sweat but it had it rained the day before, and grey clouds were still covering the sky, cooling the summer heat.

“How’s the cocktail party going?” he asks and turns his head to look at the building on the other side of the road once again. The last car had pulled up some twenty minutes ago, and judging by how many people Donghyuck had seen entering the hall, all of the people invited seemed to be there already.

The only person missing was him.

“It’s going well,” Renjun responds. “When are you planning on making your entrance?”

Donghyuck looks back at Renjun.

“I’m not,” he answers.

Renjun’s eyebrows knit.

“What?”

A second later the conference hall explodes.

Donghyuck feels the blast even from where he is standing, the shockwave not enough to break glass but enough to ruffle his hair, to make his ears ring for a few seconds. He’d made sure that there were no other people around, no workers still lingering that could get injured in the explosion, and he knew that it would take some time before the fire department would show up, that there would be no hope of survivors.

Renjun gapes at the scene with horrified eyes, his skin pale.

It pales even further when Donghyuck curls his fingers around the gun hidden in his pocket and points it at his head.

“Why did you do it?” Donghyuck asks.

To his credit, Renjun doesn’t deny the accusation, doesn’t even ask what he is accused of. Instead he simply swallows drily, and Donghyuck feels nothing but cold, blood having turned to ice in his veins, all feelings of compassion and friendship long gone.

Renjun is nothing more than a stranger in front of him, a traitor.

It takes a few more seconds before he speaks, and from the set of his shoulders, Donghyuck knows that he isn’t going to go down gracelessly, that he is never going to beg on his knees for mercy despite Donghyuck seeing the sweat beading on his forehead.

“Because I care about this country.”

Donghyuck spends a few seconds scrutinizing Renjun, turning his words over in his mind, but can’t make them make sense no matter how much he tries.

“What are you talking about?” he demands.

Renjun’s expression is free from remorse.

“The people in that building were shit,” he says after he has sucked in a breath of air and steeled himself, his eyes cold and turbulent. “They were murders and money-launderers and abusers, but they kept each other in check. There was a balance.”

The wind plays with his hair.

"But _you_ ,” he continues slowly, “you were already the de facto ruler of South Korea even before the Prime Minister sold the Byeolsan Port to you. No one has the power to keep _you_ in check. It might not matter now when you have good ambitions, but what happens if that changes, if you decide to use your power for something that will only benefit you?”

Renjun looks at him, bitter, and Donghyuck wonders how long he had truly been against him, how long he had been aiming to ruin everything he’d worked for.

It hadn’t happened overnight.

Donghyuck knew that Renjun had spilled more and more of his secrets to the people in the conference hall, the assassin attempts making sense now that he thought about them. He’d only told Renjun that he was planning on acquiring ports a few months ago, only a mere few months before the assassin attempts had commenced. Renjun must have spent those months wondering what to do, how to best nip his plans in the bud.

“You could burn this country to the ground if you wanted and no one could stop you,” Renjun says. “I don’t want to see that happen. No matter if I like you.”

The words sink into Donghyuck’s skin and for a second, Donghyuck sees things from Renjun’s perspective.

He sees himself finding out that the person he had recently befriended was plotting to take control of a country, that he’d dipped his fingers into too many places, knew too much. He sees it, and for a second, he nearly thinks he can understand Renjun, but then he sees Mark collapse to the floor, the life draining from his body, and he doesn’t.

Knows that he will never, if the burning sensation in his chest is anything to go by.

He cocks his gun, aims it at Renjun.

“Did you use Jeno to get close to me?” he asks.

Renjun doesn’t answer until Donghyuck shoots the ground near his feet. There’s a loud sound, but it’s nothing compared to the previous blast.

“Yes,” Renjun answers, voice weak, and while Donghyuck had suspected as much, he also doesn’t think Renjun is that good of an actor that he could fake the tenderness he had caught him staring at Jeno with, the way his eyes had lit up when he’d walked into the room.

Donghyuck considers his options, considers putting a bullet through Renjun’s head, knowing that Renjun would have if the roles were reversed. He also knows that killing Renjun would only be proving Renjun right, that it would end up traumatizing Jeno, even Jaemin, Jisung.

In the end he decides against it.

“You’ll tell Jeno that you want a different life,” he says. “That you are moving abroad and that you love him but that you want to leave every trace of your life behind. Him, as well.”

Donghyuck glares at Renjun and grits his teeth, eyes blazing.

“And if I ever, _ever_ find out that you’ve set a foot into this country again, I’ll make you wish that you were never even born. You are _never_ going to threaten me or the people I care about ever again.”

Renjun stares at him with wide eyes, frozen in place, and at the end of the day Donghyuck knows him well enough to read it as shock, that Renjun had already accepted the fact that he was going to die. If the outcome of the night when Mark had gotten shot had been any different, he knows with cold certainty that he would have.

He also knows that killing Renjun wouldn’t accomplish anything.

All the people Renjun had conspired with, had told his secrets to, were already dead. There was nothing else he could do.

“I’ll know if you do,” Donghyuck says. “Since I’m the most powerful person in Korea, after all.”

The police and firefighters pull up much later, after Renjun has long since disappeared, spraying the building with water, whirling about trying to save what little it is that they still can. Donghyuck watches them from the rooftop until the sun begins to set, until he feels some of the tension that has lingered in his body since Mark had gotten shot slowly disappear, and finds it a little bit ironic that Renjun had ended up being the final piece he’d needed to complete his puzzle.

Without him, he doubts that all of the people invited would have actually showed up, all wary of his intentions.

Donghyuck doesn’t wait for longer than a few minutes before his driver pulls up in his usual car, and Donghyuck goes home feeling more tired than he does powerful. The apartment is bathed in darkness, the automatic light having stopped working sometime after he had set off the grenades, but Donghyuck doesn’t bother walking over to the wall and turning on the light switch.

Instead his legs take him upstairs to his bedroom.

He had closed the bedroom door when he’d left, the safety measures in place working the best when there wasn’t only open space, but the first thing he notices when he takes the last step up the stairs is that the door is wide open.

It makes him freeze, the pulse that had been gradually slowing after his confrontation with Renjun spiking. He struggles to remember to breathe, a sinking feeling in his gut that has his fingertips feeling numb and tries to calm himself by thinking that he must have simply imagined closing the door when he left, that he had nothing to worry about.

It works until he steps into his bedroom and sees a glaringly empty bed.

Panic claws at his throat, makes him break out in chills, the world dizzy around him.

“Mark?!”

He barely recognizes his own voice, wondering if he had misjudged Renjun, if he would stoop so low as to get revenge rather than flee the country. He’d done everything in his power to make sure that his apartment was safe, had installed new safety measures, had even hired a private doctor, but a Mark that was still unconscious would be powerless against Renjun, no matter what he did.

Donghyuck is shaking when he feels a pair of arms slip under his, encircling his waist. He tenses, about to throw the intruder over his shoulder and crush him against the floor when he recognizes the scent, the soft hair tickling his neck.

Donghyuck feels his eyes burn, his legs trembling.

“You should still be in bed,” he chokes, exhausted. “I could have killed you.”

Mark lets out a weak laugh and burrows his face in Donghyuck’s neck, his nose a bit cold against his skin.

“It seems like that would actually work now.”

Donghyuck turns around, his heart in his throat, and lets his gaze roam over Mark until it finally lands on the bandage over his chest, on his arm. For what feels like the first time in weeks it isn’t stained red, blood refusing to clot, Mark lying on the bed looking paler than he had even when he hadn’t been alive.

Half a month had passed since then, half a month of Donghyuck being unable to keep his mind from straying to Mark even if he’d had a million different other things to focus on, things that needed his attention. He’d even forced the Prime Minister to come over with the final paperwork simply because he hadn’t been able to tear himself from his side. He’d known that it had been risky with Renjun still lurking around, but for the first time he simply hadn’t cared, his goal important but not more important than Mark.

“Do you still want to?” he asks, holding his breath.

He tries to school his expression but thinks he’s failed when Mark’s hands come to rub the dark circles underneath his eyes, the pads of his thumbs gentle against his skin. Donghyuck swallows, his chest tighter than he ever remembers it being, a shard of glass piercing his ribcage.

Mark shakes his head.

“You know, I feel like living is underrated now that I’ve gotten a taste of it,” he jokes, a little bit weakly, still not back to his normal strength. His eyes are gentle, full of warmth. “I’m thinking that I should probably give it a try.”

Donghyuck’s jaw aches, his shoulders slumping in relief as he collapses against Mark, making sure not to apply too much pressure against the wound despite the desire to crush Mark against him, the desire to breathe him in, to be as close as physically possible.

“Good,” Donghyuck breathes, hiding his wet eyes against his shirt. “I promise I’ll show you how amazing it can be.”

Mark’s reply is instant.

“You already have.”

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading this story!
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/donkimaki)


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